After a while the old man took his thread off the crooked stick and wound it up, poured most of the water off his minnows, and then filled the bucket again with fresh water, splashing it in with his hand so that it would be as full of oxygen as possible; and then he took out an old pipe and filled it, and as he commenced to smoke he looked around at the ground, spotted with wriggling bullheads and sunfish, and for the boy, who had experienced a lull in his activities long enough to allow him to commence to pick up and string the fish he had caught. The boy looked at him, and he brightened up and said: "Kid, you're having a good time, and I don't blame you. I am going down to Wakarusa to fish for big fish, but, after all, you've got more sense than I. The bullhead is the safest and surest fish for meat, and he's not bad sport either, because he usually bites like he meant business, although he may be a little slow. The bullhead is a good deal like the rabbit in one way--he's sure food. There's more rabbit meat on foot in Kansas than there is beef or pork, and it's all good. The buffalo was all right in his time, but even he didn't come up to the rabbit. The bullhead reminds me of the rabbit, and the rabbit reminds me of the bullhead." The old man stopped talking, and acted as though he were about to start off, when the boy asked him where he was going on the Wakarusa to fish, and he said: "I don't know just where I'll wind up. I have fished in every hole in Wakarusa from way above the Wakarusa falls down stream nearly to Lawrence, and sometimes I go to one place and sometimes to another. I've fished for bullheads, too, and for sunfish, in every place that the water is deep enough from the place where Berry Creek starts, over in the coal banks by Carbondale, down to the Sac and Fox spring and all along Lynn Creek, especially in the part that's full of boulders and little round pebbles, with here and there a riffle made by a broken flat rock. And boy, I want to tell you something--some days you can catch fish like you've been catching 'em this morning, and some days you can't. I've seen days so dull that even the bite of a crawfish was welcome." The old man started off, and then came back and took the boy by the shoulder and almost shook him as he said: "Don't tell anyone that you saw me. It's nobody's business." And then he went away. The boy was not at all afraid, although the man was a total stranger, and looked and acted very queer. The next day he told Joe Coberly about meeting him, and Joe said: