No tellin' how many was dependent on him er what plans he bed.
Must 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.