out laughing, and the tiny cockerel, which had followed him, responded with a boastful crow.
"What have you to crow about?" asked Wakefield. "If you were me, you might crow. What are you heir to, I'd like to know? A dirty old nest, and a worm or two. Do you know what I am? I'm heir to the Whiteoak millions, and it'll pay you to crow when I tell you to, and not before!"
The cockerel looked at him so hard that it turned its head almost upside down. Its bright amber eye glittered with greed.
Then in the rain-water Wakefield discovered a blackbeetle half-drowned, lying on its back, only a feeble kicking of the legs showing it to be still alive. He picked a blade of grass and with it steered the beetle round the tub. A dear little boat making a tour of the world. He made it call at various ports—Gibraltar, Suez, Ceylon, Penang. How he loved these names in his geography lessons with Mr. Fennel! Lucky, lucky beetle!
Alas! Just as they reached Shanghai, it sank. Rather ungrateful of it. Not many Canadian beetles had a chance to go to Shanghai!
He peered down at it, lying on its back in the depths of the tub. It must be rescued. He pushed up his sleeve and put his slender brown arm into the water, found the beetle, and laid it right side up in the sunshine. He lay down beside it, watching with satisfaction the slow but sure return to life. It was his second kind act that morning.
A slender, pale worm was descending on a gossamer thread out of the sky. The lightest breeze swung it, now above the tub of rain-water, now above the grass. Unperturbed, it continued its descent, the silver thread lengthening, let out from some invisible reel. A robin ran across the yard, a peewee said "peewee" from a maple tree.
The worm had arrived. An undulation passed through its slender body; it moved delicately beneath a towering blade of grass. But Wakefield was not to discover its destination or why it had descended to this sphere from
