ody, but vigorous and wiry,
and as full of scientific enthusiasm as when he was thirty years
younger, he tramped the hills, taking long walks and climbs alone, or
shorter ones with Hoyle at his heels like a devoted dog, shrilling
questions as he ran to keep up. These the good doctor answered according
to his own code, or passed over as beyond possibility of reply with
quizzical counter-questioning.

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