“If you was to try an’ ’andle it more as if it was a pitchfork now, Mr. Belloo, sir—­” suggested Adam, and, not waiting for Bellew’s laughing rejoinder, he chirrupped to the horses, and the great waggon creaked away with its mountainous load, surmounted by Adam’s grinning visage, and Small Porges’ golden curls, and followed by the rest of the merry-voiced hay-makers.

Now it was, that turning his head, Bellew espied Anthea watching him, whereupon he shouldered his fork, and coming to where she sat upon a throne of hay, he sank down at her feet with a luxurious sigh.  She had never seen him without a collar, before, and now she could not but notice how round, and white, and powerful his neck was, and how the muscles bulged upon arm, and shoulder, and how his hair curled in small, damp rings upon his brow.

“It is good,” said he, looking up into the witching face, above him, “yes, it is very good to see you idle—­just for once.”

“And I was thinking it was good to see you work,—­just for once.”

“Work!” he exclaimed, “my dear Miss Anthea, I assure you I have become a positive glutton for work.  It has become my earnest desire to plant things, and grow things, and chop things with axes; to mow things with scythes.  I dream of pastures, and ploughs, of pails and pitchforks, by night; and, by day, reaping-hooks, hoes, and rakes, are in my thoughts continually,—­which all goes to show the effect of this wonderful air of Arcadia.  Indeed, I am as full of suppressed energy, these days, as Adam is of the ‘Old Adam.’  And, talking of Adam reminds me that he has solemnly pledged himself to initiate me into the mysteries of swinging a scythe to-morrow morning at—­five o’clock!  Yes indeed, my heart bounds responsive to the swish of a scythe in thick grass, and my soul sits enraptured upon a pitch-fork.”

“How ridiculous you are!” she laughed.

“And how perfectly content!” he added.

“Is anyone ever quite content?” she sighed, glancing down at him, wistful-eyed.

“Not unless they have found Arcadia,” he answered.

“Have you then?”

“Yes,” he nodded complacently, “oh yes, I’ve found it.”

“Are you—­sure?”

“Quite sure!”

“Arcadia!” she repeated, wrinkling her brows, “what is Arcadia and—­where?”

“Arcadia,” answered Bellew, watching the smoke rise up from his pipe, with a dreamy eye, “Arcadia is the—­Promised Land,—­the Land that everyone tries to find, sometime or other, and may be—­anywhere.”

“And how came you to—­find it?”

“By the most fortunate chance in the world.”

“Tell me,” said Anthea, taking a wisp of hay, and beginning to plait it in dexterous, brown fingers, “tell me how you found it.”

“Why then you must know, in the first place,” he began in his slow, even voice, “that it is a place I have sought for in all my wanderings, and I have been pretty far afield,—­but I sought it so long, and so vainly, that I began to think it was like the El Dorado of the old Adventurers, and had never existed at all.”