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.