“It killed her,” replied Uncle Andy simply.  “But by chance it didn’t hurt Little Silk Wing himself, as he clung desperately to her neck.  The children, with cries of sympathy and reprobation, rushed to pick up the little dark body.  But the black-and-white dog was ahead of them.  He raced in and snatched the queer thing up, gently enough, in his teeth.  But he let it drop again at once in huge surprise.  It had come apart.  All of a sudden it was two bats instead of one.  He couldn’t understand it at all.  And neither could the children.  And while they stood staring—­the black-and-white dog with his tongue hanging out and his tail forgetting to wag, and the children with their eyes quite round—­Little Silk Wing fluttered up into the air, flew hesitatingly this way and that for a moment till he felt sure of himself, and then darted off to the shelter of those woods where he had so often accompanied his mother on her hunting.”

The Child heaved a sigh of relief.  “I’m so glad he got off,” he murmured.

“I thought you would be.  That’s why he did,” said Uncle Andy enigmatically.

CHAPTER IX

A LITTLE ALIEN IN THE WILDERNESS

It was too hot and clear and still that morning for the most expert of fishermen to cast his fly with any hope of success.  The broad pale-green lily pads lay motionless on the unruffled breast of Silverwater.  Nowhere even the round ripple of a rising minnow broke the blazing sheen of the lake.  The air was so drowsy that those sparks of concentrated energy, the dragonflies, forgot to chase their aerial quarry and slept, blazing like amethysts, rubies and emeralds, on the tops of the cattail rushes.  Very lazily and without the slightest reluctance, Uncle Andy ruled in his line, secured his cast, and leaned his rod securely in a forked branch to await more favorable conditions for his pet pastime.  For the present it seemed to him that nothing could be more delightful and more appropriate to the hour than to lie under the thick-leaved maple at the top of the bank, and smoke and gaze out in lotus-eating mood across the enchanted radiance of the water.  Even the Child, usually as restless as the dragonflies themselves or those exponents of perpetual motion, the brown water skippers, was lying on his back, quite still, and staring up with round, contemplative blue eyes through the diaphanous green of the maple leaves.

Though his eyes were so very wide open, it was that extreme but ephemeral openness which a child’s eyes so frequently assume just before closing up very tight.  In fact, in just about three-eights of a minute he would have been, in all probability, sound asleep, with a rose-pink light, sifted through his eyelids, dancing joyously over his dreams.  But at that moment there came a strange cry from up the sweeping curve of the shore—­so strange a cry that the Child sat up instantly very straight, and demanded, with a gasp, “What’s that?”