oor black angel is so tired of being punished it's for
slipping to the gates, beating its wings trying to make the Master
hear!"

Again and again Freckles searched the sky, but there was no answering
gleam of golden gates, no form of sailing bird; then he went slowly
on his way, turning the feather and wondering about it. It was a wing
quill, eighteen inches in length, with a heavy spine, gray at the base,
shading to jet black at the tip, and it caught the play of the sun's
rays in slanting gleams of green and bronze. Again Freckles' "old man
of the sea" sat sullen and heavy on his shoulders and weighted him down
until his step lagged and his heart ached.

"Where did it come from? What is it? Oh, how I wish I knew!" he kept
repeating as he turned and studied the feather, with almost unseeing
eyes, so intently was he thinking.

Before him spread a large, green pool, filled with rotting logs and
leaves, bordered with delicate ferns and grasses among which lifted the
creamy spikes of the arrow-head, the blue of water-hyacinth, and the
delicate yellow of the jewel-flower. As Freckles leaned, handling the
feather and staring at it, then into the depths of the pool, he once
more gave voice to his old query: "I wonder what it is!"

Straight across from him, couched in the mosses of a soggy old log, a
big green bullfrog, with palpitant throat and batting eyes, lifted his
head and bellowed in answer. "FIN' DOUT! FIN' DOUT!"

"Wha--what's that?" stammered Freckles, almost too much bewildered to
speak. "I--I know you are only a bullfrog, but, be jabbers, that sounded
mightily like speech. Wouldn't you please to be saying it over?"

The bullfrog cuddled contentedly in the ooze. Then suddenly he lifted
his voice, and, as an imperative drumbeat, rolled it again: "FIN' DOUT!
FIN' DOUT! FIN DOUT!"

Freckles had the answer. Something seemed to snap in his brain. There
was a wavering flame before his eyes. Then his mind cleared. His
head lifted in a new poise, his shoulders squared, while his spine
straightened. The agony was over. His soul floated free. Freckles came
into his birthright.

"Before God, I will!" He uttered the oath so impressively that the
recording angel never winced as he posted it in the prayer column.

Freckles set his hat over the top of one of the locust posts used
between trees to hold up the wire while he fastened the feather securely
in the band. Then he started down the line, talking to himself as men