t a gi'n him a lot o' pleasure t' fly round in the sunlight, workin'
every fair day. 'S all over now.'

He had a gloomy face for an hour after that and many a time, in the days
that followed, I heard him speak of the murdered bee.

We lay resting awhile after dinner and watching a big city of ants.
Uncle Eb told me how they tilled the soil of the mound every year and
sowed their own kind of grain--a small white seed like rice--and reaped
their harvest in the late summer, storing the crop in their dry cellars
under ground. He told me also the story of the ant lion--a big beetle
that lives in the jungles of the grain and the grass--of which I
remember only an outline, more or less imperfect.

Here it is in my own rewording of his tale: On a bright day one of the
little black folks went off on a long road in a great field of barley.
He was going to another city of his own people to bring helpers for the
harvest. He came shortly to a sandy place where the barley was thin and
the hot sunlight lay near to the ground. In a little valley close by
the road of the ants he saw a deep pit, in the sand, with steep sides
sloping to a point in the middle and as big around as a biscuit. Now
the ants are a curious people and go looking for things that are new and
wonderful as they walk abroad, so they have much to tell worth hearing
after a journey. The little traveller was young and had no fear, so he
left the road and went down to the pit and peeped over the side of it.

'What in the world is the meaning of this queer place?' he asked himself
as he ran around the rim. In a moment he had stepped over and the soft
sand began to cave and slide beneath him. Quick as a flash the big
lion-beetle rose up in the centre of the pit and began to reach for
him. Then his legs flew in the caving sand and the young ant struck
his blades in it to hold the little he could gain. Upward he struggled,
leaping and floundering in the dust. He had got near the rim and had
stopped, clinging to get his breath, when the lion began flinging the
sand at him with his long feelers. It rose in a cloud and fell on the
back of the ant and pulled at him as it swept down. He could feel the
mighty cleavers of the lion striking near his hind legs and pulling the
sand from under them. He must go down in a moment and he knew what that
meant. He had heard the old men of the tribe tell often--how they hold
one helpless and slash him into a dozen pieces. He was letting go,