They sat together one day, eating their luncheon in the shelter of a great wall of rock, and below them lay a pool of clear water which trickled from a spring higher up. Now and then a bullfrog would sound his deep bass note, and all the time the high piping of the peepers made shrill accompaniment to their voices as they conversed. The doctor had made an aquarium for Hoyle, using a great glass jar which he obtained from a druggist in Farington. They had come to-day on a quest for snails to eat the green growth, which had so covered the sides of the jar as to hide the interesting water world within from the boy's eyes. Many things had already occurred in that small world to set the boy thinking. "Doctah Hoyle, you remembeh that thar quare bunch of leetle sticks an' stones you put in my 'quar'um first day you fixed hit up fer me?" "Yes, yes." "Well, the' is a right quare thing with a big hade come outen hit, an' he done eat up some o' the leetle black bugs. I seed him jump quicker'n lightnin' at that leetlist fish only so long, an' try to bite a piece outen his fin--his lowest fin. What did he do that fer?" "Why--why--he was hungry. He made his dinner off the little black bugs, and he wanted the fin for his dessert." "I don't like that kind of a beast. Oncet he was a worm in a kind of a hole-box, an' then he turned into a leetle beast-crittah; an' what'll he be next?" "Next--why, next he'll be a fly--a--a beautiful fly with four wings all blue and gold and green--" "I seen them things flyin' round in the summeh. Hit's quare how things gits therselves changed that-a-way into somethin' else--from a worm into that beast-crittah an' then into one o' these here devil flies. You reckon hit'll eveh git changed into something diff'ent--some kind er a bird?" "A bird? No, no. When he becomes a f--fly, he's finished and done for." "P'r'aps ther is some folks that-a-way, too. You reckon that's what ails me?" "You? Why,--why what ails you?" "You reckon p'r'aps I mount git changed some way outen this here quare back I got, so't I can hol' my hade like otheh folks? Jes' go to sleep like, an' wake up straight like Frale?" The old doctor turned and looked down a moment on the child sitting hunched at his side. His mouth worked as he meditated a reply. "What would you do if you could c--arry your head straight like Frale? If you had been like him, you would be running a 'still' pretty soon. You never would have come to me to set you straight, and so you would n--never have seen all the pictures and the great cities. You are going to be a man before you know it, and--" "And I'll do a heap o' things when I'm a man, too--but I wisht--I wisht-- These here snails we b'en hunt'n', you reckon they're done growed to ther shells so they can't get out? What did God make 'em that-a-way fer?"