The Field of Clover | Page 4

where it lay,
breaking the ground and marring its smooth course. Then it shook its
head slowly, and returned impassively to rest.
In the morning the farmer came and saw the broken earth close under
the Plough's nose. Noodle, hiding among the corn hard by, heard him

say, 'What hast thou heard in the night, O my moonbeam, my miracle,
that thy lily-foot has trodden up the ground? Hast thou forgotten whose
hand feeds thee, whose corn it is thou lovest, whose heart's care also
cherishes thee?'
The farmer went away, and presently came back bearing a bowl of corn;
and Noodle saw the Plough lift its head to its master's palm, and feed
like a horse on the grain.
Then Noodle, gay of heart, waited till it was night, and surely his time
was short, for on the morrow his wages were to be paid, and the Plough
was to be his, or else he was to be the farmer's bondservant for the rest
of his life. He took with him three handfuls of corn, and went down to
where the Plough stood waiting by the furrow. Shaping his lips to the
ring, he whistled gently like a lover, and immediately the Plough stirred,
and lifted up its head as if to look at him.
'O my moonbeam, my miracle,' whispered Noodle, 'wilt thou not come
to the one that feeds thee?' and he held out a handful of corn. But the
Plough gave no regard to him or his grain: slowly it moved away from
him back into the furrow.
Then Noodle laughed softly and dropped his ring, the Sweetener, into
the hand that held the grain; and barely had he offered the corn before
he felt the silver Plough nozzling at his palm, and eating as a horse eats
from the hand of its master.
Then he whistled again, placing the Sweetener back between his lips;
and the Galloping Plough sprang after him, and followed at his heels
like a dog.
So, finding himself its master, he bid it stay for the night; and in the
morning he said to the farmer, 'Give me my wages, and let me go!' And
the farmer laughed, saying, 'Take your wages, and go!'
Then Noodle took off his ring, the Sweetener, and laid it between his
lips and blew through it; and up like a moonbeam, and like an Arab
mare, sprang the Galloping Plough at his call. So he leaped upon its

back, crying, 'Carry me away out of this land, O thou moonbeam, and
miracle of beauty, and never slacken nor stay except I bid thee!'
Vainly the farmer, borne down on a torrent of rage and amazement,
whistled his best, and threw corn and rice from the rear; for the
whistling of Noodle was sweeter to the ear, and his corn sweeter to the
taste, and he nearer to the heart of the Galloping Plough than was the
old master whom it left behind.

[Illustration]
III
THE THIRSTY WELL
So they escaped, slitting the swift hours with ungovernable speed. The
furrow they two made in the world that day, as they went shooting over
the round of it, was called in after times the Equator, and men still
know it by the heat of it, though it has since been covered over by the
dust of ages.
To Noodle, as he went careering round it, the whole world's circuit ran
in a line across his brain, entering his vision and passing through it as a
thread through the needle's eye. Nor would he of his own will ever have
stopped his galloping, but that at the completion of the first round a
mighty thirst took hold of him. 'O my moonbeam,' he said, choking
behind parched lips, and sick at heart, 'check me, or I faint!' And the
Galloping Plough stopped at once, and set him to earth in a green space
under the shadow of overhanging boughs.
He found himself in a richly grown garden, a cool paradise for a
traveller to rest in. Close at hand and inviting to the eye was a well with
a bucket slung ready to be let down. Noodle had little thought of
seeking for the owner of the garden to beg for a drink, since water is an
equal gift to all and the right of any man; but as he drew near he found
the means to it withheld from him, the lid being fast locked. He went
on in search of the owner, till at length he came upon the same lying

half asleep under a thorn-bush with the key in her hand. She was an old
woman, so withered and dry, she looked as if no water could have ever
passed her lips.
When Noodle asked for a