eady passed through
that most painful period of doubt as to Santa Claus and the Fairies,
and had not yet reached the period of certainty about everything. He
was capable of both belief and doubt. So, naturally, he had his
difficulties.

Bill certainly knew an astonishing lot about the creatures of the wild.
But also, like all guides who are worth their salt, he knew an
astonishing lot of things that weren't so. He had imagination, or he
would never have done for a guide. When he knew--which was not
often--that he did _not_ know a thing, he could put two and two
together and make it yield the most extraordinary results. He felt it
one of his first duties to be interesting. And above all, he felt it
his duty to be infallible. No one could be expected to have implicit
faith in a guide who was not infallible. He never acknowledged
insufficient information about anything whatever that pertained to the
woods and waters. Also he had a very poor opinion of what others might
profess to know. He felt convinced that so long as he refrained from
any _too_ lively contributions to the science of animal life, no one
would be able to discredit him. But he was conscientious in his
deductions. He would never have permitted himself to say that blue
herons wore gum boots in wading, just because he had happened to find
an old gum boot among the reeds by the outlet of the lake, where the
herons did most of their fishing. He remembered that that gum boot was
one of a pair which had been thrown away by a former visitor to
Silverwater.

Uncle Andy, on the other hand, knew that there was an astonishing lot
_he didn't_ know about animals, and he didn't hesitate to say so. He
was a reformed sportsman, who, after spending a great part of his life
in happily killing things all over the earth, had come to the quaint
conclusion that most of them were more interesting alive than dead,
especially to themselves. He found a kindred spirit in the Babe, whose
education, along the lines of maiming cats and sparrows with sling shot
or air gun, had been absolutely neglected.

Uncle Andy was wont to say that there was only one man in all the world
who knew _all_ about all the animals--and that he was not Andrew
Barton, Esq. At this, Bill would smile proudly. At first this modesty
on Uncle Andy's part was a disappointment to the Babe. But it ended in
giving him confidence in whatever Uncle Andy told him; especially after
he came to realize