"Do not forget the saucy parroquets we saw yesterday as we came through the forest. You went so far in your excitement over those little green and golden birds, with their scarlet heads, that you declared they reminded you of the Garden of Eden. Look about you, Zachariah. Here is the Garden of Eden, right at your feet. Do you see those plum trees over yonder? Well, sir, old Adam and Eve used to sit under those very trees during the middle of the day, resting themselves in the shade. And right over there behind that big rock is where the serpent had his nest. He gave Eve a plum instead of an apple, because Eve was especially fond of plums and did not care at all for apples. She--" "'Scuse me, Marse Kenneth, but dem is hawthorn trees," said Zachariah, grinning. "So they are, so they are. Now that I come to think of it, it was the red-haw that Eve fancied more than any other fruit in the garden." "Yas, suh,--an' ole Adam he was powerful fond ob snappin'-turtles fo' breakfas'," said Zachariah, pointing to a tortoise creeping slowly along the ditch. "An' lil Cain an' Abel,--my lan', how dem chillum used to gobble up de mud pies ole Mammy Eve used to make right out ob dish yere road we's ridin' on." And so, in this sportive mood, master and man, warmed by the golden sun and cheered by the spring wind of an April morn, traversed this new-found realm of Cerus, forded the turbulent, swollen creek that later on ran through the heart of the Gwynne acres, and came at length to the main road leading into the town. They passed log cabins and here and there pretentious frame houses standing back from the road in the shelter of oak and locust groves. Their passing was watched by curious women and children in dooryards and porches, while from the fields men waved greeting and farewell with the single sweep of a hat. On every barn door the pelts of foxes and raccoons were stretched and nailed. Presently they drew near to a lane reaching off to the west, and apparently ending in a wooded knoll, a quarter of a mile away. "There," said Kenneth, with a wave of his hand, "is where I shall some day erect a mansion, Zachariah, that will be the wonder and the envy of all the people in the country. For unless I am mistaken, that is the grove of oaks that Striker mentioned. Behold, Zachariah,--all that is mine. Four hundred acres of as fine farm-land as there is in all the world, and timber unparalleled. Yes, I am right. There is the house that Striker described, the place where my father lived he first came to the Wea. Egad, 'tis not a regal palace, is it, Zachariah? The most imposing thing about it is the chimney." They were gazing at a cabin that squatted meekly over against the wall of oaks. Its roof was barely visible above the surrounding stockade, while the barn and styes and sheds were hidden entirely beyond the slope. It was, in truth, the most primitive and insignificant house they had seen that day.