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.

Here it is in my own rewording of his tale:  On a bright day one of the little black folks went off on a long road in a great field of barley.  He was going to another city of his own people to bring helpers for the harvest.  He came shortly to a sandy place where the barley was thin and the hot sunlight lay near to the ground.  In a little valley close by the road of the ants he saw a deep pit, in the sand, with steep sides sloping to a point in the middle and as big around as a biscuit.  Now the ants are a curious people and go looking for things that are new and wonderful as they walk abroad, so they have much to tell worth hearing after a journey.  The little traveller was young and had no fear, so he left the road and went down to the pit and peeped over the side of it.

‘What in the world is the meaning of this queer place?’ he asked himself as he ran around the rim.  In a moment he had stepped over and the soft sand began to cave and slide beneath him.  Quick as a flash the big lion-beetle rose up in the centre of the pit and began to reach for him.  Then his legs flew in the caving sand and the young ant struck his blades in it to hold the little he could gain.  Upward he struggled, leaping and floundering in the dust.  He had got near the rim and had stopped, clinging to get his breath, when the lion