“Just give me hold o' the tin,” said Bony, with glad eyes. He blew back the froth and drank like a famished horse. He stopped for breath and whispered: “Peaches and cream? Yes, kind lady,” and drank more. Again he rested, smiling, as he added: “Ham and eggs? Yes, if you please, with a cup o' coffee,” and continued his feast. Soon he passed the pail to me, and I took a good drink. Then we went on across the field, climbed a fence, and proceeded on our way. We left the road by walking in the bed of a brook, so that no one could follow our footsteps. “It's a big world,” said Bony. “If we keep out o' the way awhile it 'll blow over and we can settle for a song, and everything 'll be all hunk. We'll pike off West, where we can go to work for big wages, and I'll show ye something o' the world.” The thought presented a great temptation, for I longed to see Niagara Falls, of which the Pearl had told me. ADVENTURE IV--BEING THAT OF CRICKET AND THE PURPLE GHOST [Illustration: 9055] E came to broad fields, where the brook we had followed wound through many acres of wheat. It stood thick and high as my shoulders, for I was rather small of my age, and rustled in the wind. “Here's our hotel,” said Bony, as he began to wade in the brook again. “We'll find our rooms and put up for the day.” Far out in this yellowing field we climbed the bank of the stream, and on our hands and knees crawled in among the wheat-stalks. “Ah!” said Bony Squares as he lay back in the wheat; “no ice-water, thank you. Call me at seven.” I lay down near, and soon heard him breathing heavily as he fell asleep. I looked up through the grain at a little patch of the blue sky, and thought and listened. The great field rang with the chirp of crickets, that somehow set me thinking of my folly. It was a curious, beautiful country there, beneath the grain. Leaning on my elbow, I could look off under its green empyrean, supported by innumerable columns. There were little roads and trails, and a mouse came galloping up one of them. It suggested a forest of the fairies. A small bird went by me wandering in a little highway with the leisurely pace of a hen. I could hear a bobolink singing just above my head, and then the whir of his wings. Soon he seized a swaying stalk--one foot above another--on the very edge of my bed, and as he rocked back and forth filled the breeze with song. A bumblebee, which had fallen through the wheat-blades, rose here and there and tried to ram his way upward into the sunlight. The roar of his wings reminded me of the big side-wheeler which had passed us the night before on the river. It suggested thunder in the low, green heavens above that little world. Innumerable bearded tops, now bleaching yellow, made a sort of æolian music in the breeze. It has often seemed to me that the birds have better ears for it than we; that, indeed, the fields are full of bells and harps and fragrance and color far beyond the reach of men.