Chapter 4 - Page 2

with a wild eye, at the rattling wagon and ran the harder.
He leaped aside at the bottom and then we went all in a heap.
Fortunately no harm was done.

'I declare!' said Uncle Eb as he came up to us, puffing like a spent
horse, and picked me up unhurt and began to untangle the harness
of old Fred, 'I guess he must a thought the devil was after him.'

The dog growled a little for a moment and bit at the harness, but
coaxing reassured him and he went along all right again on the
level. At a small settlement the children came out and ran along
beside my wagon, laughing and asking me questions. Some of
them tried to pet the dog, but old Fred kept to his labour at the
heels of Uncle Eb and looked neither to right nor left. We stopped
under a tree by the side of a narrow brook for our dinner, and one
incident of that meal I think of always when I think of Uncle Eb. It
shows the manner of man he was and with what understanding and
sympathy he regarded every living thing. In rinsing his teapot he
accidentally poured a bit of water on a big bumble-bee. The poor
creature struggled to lift hill, and then another downpour caught
him and still another until his wings fell drenched. Then his breast
began heaving violently, his legs stiffened behind him and he sank,
head downward, in the grass. Uncle Eb saw the death throes of the
bee and knelt down and lifted the dead body by one of its wings.

'Jes' look at his velvet coat,' he said, 'an' his wings all wet n' stiff.
They'll never carry him another journey. It's too bad a man has t'
kill every step he takes.'

The bee's tail was moving faintly and Uncle Eb laid him out in the
warm sunlight and fanned him awhile with his hat, trying to bring
back the breath of life.

'Guilty!' he said, presently, coming back with a sober face. 'Thet's
a dead bee. No tellin' how many was dependent on him er what
plans he bed. Must a gi'n him a lot o' pleasure t' fly round in the
sunlight, workin' every fair day. 'S all over now.'

He had a gloomy face for an hour after that and many a time, in
the days that followed, I heard him speak of the murdered bee.

We lay resting awhile after dinner and watching a big city of ants.
Uncle Eb told me how they tilled the soil of the mound every year
and sowed their own kind of grain - a small white seed like rice -
and reaped their harvest in the late summer, storing the crop in
their dry cellars under ground. He told me also the story of the ant
lion - a big beetle that lives in the jungles of the grain and the
grass - of which I remember only an outline, more or less
imperfect.

Here it is in my own rewording of his tale: On a bright day one of
the little black folks went off on a long road in a great