radiance of its eyes upon the man's face, the
dragon-fly calmly continued its meal, using the second joints of its
front pair of legs to help manipulate the rather awkward morsel. Its
great round jaws crushed their prey resistlessly, while the inner
mouth sucked up the juices so cleanly and instantaneously that the
repast left no smallest stain upon the man's spotless shirt. When the
feast was over there remained nothing of the victim but a compact,
perfectly rounded, glistening green ball, the size of a pea, made up
of the well-chewed shell-like parts of the grasshopper's body. It
reminded the man of the round "castings" of fur or feathers which an
owl ejects after its undiscriminating banquet. Having rolled the
little green ball several times between its jaws, to make sure there
was no particle of nourishment left therein, the dragon-fly coolly
dropped it into a crease in the shirt-bosom, and rustled away.

[Illustration: "A LARGE FROG RISE TO THE SURFACE JUST BELOW HER."]

It chanced that this particular and conspicuous individual of the
little wolves of the air was a female. A half-hour later, when the man
had almost grown tired of his watching, he again caught sight of the
great fly. This time she alighted on a half-submerged log, one end
of which lay on shore by the man's feet, while the other end was
afloat in deep water, where it could rise and fall with every change
in the level of the pool. Quivering and gleaming with all her subtle
fires, the dragon-fly stood motionless on the log for a few seconds.
Then she backed down close to the water's edge, thrust her long,
slender abdomen a good inch into the water, and curled it under her as
if she were trying to sting the hidden surface of the log. In reality,
as the man at once understood, she was busy laying eggs,--eggs that
should presently develop into those masked and terrible larvae of hers,
the little wolves of the pool. She laid the eggs in a row under the
log, where there was no danger of the water receding from them. She
moved along the log daintily, step by step, and her wings fluttered
over the task.

The man had taken out his watch as soon as he saw what she was about,
in order that he might time the egg-laying process. But he was not
destined to discover what he wanted to know. The dragon-fly had been
at her business for perhaps two minutes, when the man saw a large frog
rise to the surface just below her. He liked all dragon-flies,--and
for this one