"The more I see of this farm the finer it looks to me. Not a foot of waste ground, not a nesting-place for weeds, not a broken fence; grove and stream, and tilled fields, and gardens, and lawns, and well-kept buildings. Not an unpainted board nor broken hinge--everything in perfect repair except that splintered framework at the rose-arbor." He paused on a little ridge above the Winnowoc from which the whole farm lay in full view. His artistic eye noted the peaceful beauty of the scene, the growing crops, the yellowing wheat, the black-green corn, the fertile meadows swathed in June sunshine, the graceful shrubbery and big forest trees through which the red-tiled roofs of the buildings glowed, the pigeons circling about the cupolas of the barn. And not the least attractive feature of the picture, although he was unconscious of it, was the young artist himself, astride a graceful black horse, in relief against a background of wooded border of the bluff above the clear gurgling Winnowoc. Eugene looked well on horseback, although he was no lover of horses, and preferred the steady, sure mounts to the spirited ones. "I wonder if Jerry's big estate can be as well appointed as this. I wish she were here with me now." The rider fell to dreaming of Jerry, trying to put her in a picture of this "Eden" six times enlarged. <tb> At this same hour Jerry Swaim was sitting in Junius Brutus Ponk's gray runabout under the shade of the low oak-grove, gazing with burning eyes at her own kingdom built out of Kansas sand. <tb> Mrs. Darby had hot coffee and cold chicken and cherry preserves and cake with blackberry wine all daintily served for a hungry man to enjoy after a long three hours on horseback in the sunshine. The rose-arbor was odorous with perfume from the sweet-peas, clinging to the trellis that ran between the side lawn and the grape-arbor. What took place in that council had its results in the letter that Eugene Wellington wrote that night to Jerry Swaim. He did not mail it for several days, and when he went to his tasks on the morning after his fingers had let go of it at the lip of the iron mail-box, the artist in him said things to him that to the day of his death he would never quite forget. <tb> Late one afternoon, a fortnight after the day of Jerry's visit to her claim, Ponk, of the Commercial Hotel and Garage, slipped into the office of the Macpherson Mortgage Company. "York, what happens to folks that tends to other folks's affairs?" he asked, as he spread his short proportions over a chair beside York's desk. "Sometimes they get the gratitude of posterity. More generally their portion is present contempt and future obscurity. Are you in line for promotion on that, Ponk?" York replied. "I'm 'bout ready to take chances," Ponk said, with a good-natured grin. "All right. Am I involved in your scheme of things?" York inquired.