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.