THE BROOK SHOAL. 
I 4 I 
water over which they threw themselves with such long 
strides without sinking. And there were the funny whirl¬ 
igig beetles, who jerked up and down and sideways in the 
water, with no possible method in their madness. 
Butterflies wavered uncertainly about, as if drunken 
with the nectar of flowers, or like boats with too large a 
spread of sail for their ballast ; then settled slowdy down to 
eating mud. What is the affinity between this emblem of 
immortality and mud ? 
Dragon-flies flashed through the air like living jewels, 
compelling the child’s admiration ; though, having been 
told the wicked slander, that they were the Devil’s darn¬ 
ing-needles, and would sew up her mouth if she told lies, 
and fibbing being her besetting sin, she involuntarily cov¬ 
ered her mouth with both hands. 
Here, too, were frogs—all sizes of frogs—from the tiny 
tadpole that she watched through the strange change from 
tadpoles to legs, to great green bullfrogs, one of whom al¬ 
ways sat on a flat stone at the edge of the shoal, with toes 
turned in and eyes closed to a narrow crack, and a sancti¬ 
monious expression, as if saying his prayers, until some 
luckless insect alighted near, when, presto ! his eyes and 
mouth were open, his toes wide apart, and the unsuspect¬ 
ing insect was in that capacious stomach that came clear 
up to his lips while one was winking. When the child 
heard the story of Jonah, she wondered if he kicked up 
such a rumpus inside the whale as the bugs did inside the 
frog—before they were digested. 
The muskrats swam down sometimes from the deep, 
dark water, but when they saw the child, they were back 
again like a thought. They were too daring once, though, 
and that was the beginning of their extermination. It 
happened in this wise : An old hen hatched out a brood 
of very surprising chickens. Such wide noses, short legs, 
and web feet were never seen in her family before, but she 
