ate was not ugly. Under his white hair, which "looked every
way for Sunday," were blue eyes and ruddy cheeks, and a mouth as pretty
as it was solemn. The comical little fellow wore an unbleached cotton
shirt, and tattered pantaloons, with home-made suspenders or "gallowses."
The pantaloons had always been old, I think, for they were made out of a
pair of his father's--his "daddy's," as he would have told you--and
nobody ever knew his father to have a new pair, so they must have been
old from the beginning. For in the Indian Kaintuck country nothing ever
seems to be new. Bobby Towpate himself was born looking about a thousand
years old, and had aged some centuries already. As for hat, he wore one
of his daddy's old hats when he wore any, and it would have answered well
for an umbrella if it had not been ragged.

Bobby's play-ground was anywhere along the creek in the woods. There were
so many children that there was nobody to look after him; so he just kept
a careful eye on himself, and that made it all right. As he was not a
very energetic child, there was no danger of his running into mischief.
Indeed, he never ran at all. He was given to sitting down on the ground
and listening to the crazy singing of the loons--birds whose favorite
amusement consists in trying to see which can make the most hideous
noise. Then, too, he would watch the stake-drivers flying along the
creek, with their long, ugly necks sticking out in front of them, and
their long, ugly legs sticking out behind them, and their long, ugly
wings sticking out on each side of them. They never seemed to have any
bodies at all. People call them stake-drivers because their musical
voices sound like the driving of a stake: "Ke-whack! ke-whack!" They also
call them "Fly-up-the-creeks," and plenty of ugly names besides.

It was one sleepy summer afternoon that Bobby sat on the root of a
beech-tree, watching a stake-driver who stood in the water as if looking
for his dinner of tadpoles, when what should the homely bird do but walk
right out on the land and up to Bobby. Bobby then saw that it was not a
stake-driver, but a long-legged, long-necked, short-bodied gentleman, in
a black bob-tail coat. And yet his long, straight nose did look like a
stake-driver's beak, to be sure. He was one of the stake-driver fairies,
who live in the dark and lonesome places along the creeks in the Hoosier
country. They make the noise that you hear, "Ke-whack! ke-whack!" It may
be the