'! What for?"

"Zounds, man!--did n't you hear?" snarled the Squire. "He's a famous
entomologist. It's his bugs and spiders."

"Gosh!" ejaculated Jared, his hand seeking the bald spot on the back of
his head. "Who'd ever have thought it? Gorry! Let's have a look at
it." And he opened the paper and peered at the print with near-sighted
eyes.

It was on Monday, three days later, that Jared, Seth, and the Squire
were once more accosted in the hotel office by a man they did not know.

"Good-evening, gentlemen, I--"

"You don't even have to say it," cut in Jared, with a nourish of both
hands. "We know why you're here without your telling."

"An' you've come ter the right place, sir--the right place," declared
Seth Wilber, pompously. "What Professor Marvin don't know about bugs
an' spiders ain't wuth knowin'. I tell ye, sir, he's the biggest
entymollygist that there is ter be found."

"That he is," affirmed the Squire, with an indulgently superior smile
toward Wilber--"the very greatest _entomologist_ living," he corrected
carefully. "And no wonder, sir; he's studied bugs from babyhood.
_I've known him all his life--all his life, sir_, and I always said
he'd make his mark in the world."

"Oh, but--" began the stranger.

"'Member when he took the parson's hat to catch butterflies in?"
chuckled Jared, speaking to the Squire, but throwing furtive glances
toward the stranger to make sure of his attention. "Gorry--but he was
a cute one! Wish 't had been my hat. I 'd 'a' had it framed an'
labeled, an' hung up on the wall there."

"Yes, I remember," nodded the Squire; then he added with a complacent
smile: "The mischievous little lad used my overshoe for a fish-pond
once--I have that overshoe yet."

"Have ye now?" asked Seth Wilber enviously. "I want ter know! Well,
anyhow, my Tim, he went ter school with him, an' set in the same seat,"
continued Seth, turning toward the stranger. "Tim's got an old
writin'-book with one leaf all sp'iled 'cause one of young Marvin's
spiders got into the inkwell an' then did a cake-walk across the page.
Tim, he got a lickin' fur it then, but he says he would n't give up
that page now fur forty lickin's."

The stranger shifted from one foot to the other.

"Yes, yes," he began, "but--"

"You'd oughter seen him when old Marvin used ter send him put to hoe
pertaters," cut in Jared gleefully. "Gorry!--young as he was, he was
all bugs then. He was smart enough to know th