Two Little Savages | Page 6

it, and one glorious day of late
April in its twelfth return he had wandered northward along to a little
wood a couple of miles from the town. It was full of unnamed flowers
and voices and mysteries. Every tree and thicket had a voice--a long
ditch full of water had many that called to him. "_Peep-peep-peep_,"
they seemed to say in invitation for him to come and see. He crawled

again and again to the ditch and watched and waited. The loud whistle
would sound only a few rods away, "_Peep-peep-peep_," but ceased at
each spot when he came near--sometimes before him, sometimes
behind, but never where he was. He searched through a small pool with
his hands, sifted out sticks and leaves, but found nothing else. A farmer
going by told him it was only a "spring Peeper," whatever that was,
"some kind of a critter in the water."
Under a log not far away Yan found a little Lizard that tumbled out of
sight into a hole. It was the only living thing there, so he decided that
the "Peeper" must be a "Whistling Lizard." But he was determined to
see them when they were calling. How was it that the ponds all around
should be full of them calling to him and playing hide and seek and yet
defying his most careful search? The voices ceased as soon as he came
near, to be gradually renewed in the pools he had left. His presence was
a husher. He lay for a long time watching a pool, but none of the voices
began again in range of his eye. At length, after realizing that they were
avoiding him, he crawled to a very noisy pond without showing himself,
and nearer and yet nearer until he was within three feet of a loud peeper
in the floating grass. He located the spot within a few inches and yet
could see nothing. He was utterly baffled, and lay there puzzling over it,
when suddenly all the near Peepers stopped, and Yan was startled by a
footfall; and looking around, he saw a man within a few feet, watching
him.
Yan reddened--a stranger was always an enemy; he had a natural
aversion to all such, and stared awkwardly as though caught in crime.
The man, a curious looking middle-aged person, was in shabby clothes
and wore no collar. He had a tin box strapped on his bent shoulders,
and in his hands was a long-handled net. His features, smothered in a
grizzly beard, were very prominent and rugged. They gave evidence of
intellectual force, with some severity, but his gray-blue eyes had a
kindly look.
He had on a common, unbecoming, hard felt hat, and when he raised it
to admit the pleasant breeze Yan saw that the wearer had hair like his
own--a coarse, paleolithic mane, piled on his rugged brow, like a mass

of seaweed lodged on some storm-beaten rock.
"F'what are ye fynding, my lad?" said he in tones whose gentleness was
in no way obscured by a strong Scottish tang.
Still resenting somewhat the stranger's presence, Yan said:
"I'm not finding anything; I am only trying to see what that Whistling
Lizard is like."
The stranger's eyes twinkled. "Forty years ago Ah was laying by a pool
just as Ah seen ye this morning, looking and trying hard to read the
riddle of the spring Peeper. Ah lay there all day, aye, and mony anither
day, yes, it was nigh onto three years before Ah found it oot. Ah'll be
glad to save ye seeking as long as Ah did, if that's yer mind. Ah'll show
ye the Peeper."
Then he raked carefully among the leaves near the ditch, and soon
captured a tiny Frog, less than an inch long.
"Ther's your Whistling Lizard: he no a Lizard at all, but a Froggie.
Book men call him Hyla pickeringii, an' a gude Scotchman he'd make,
for ye see the St. Andrew's cross on his wee back. Ye see the whistling
ones in the water put on'y their beaks oot an' is hard to see. Then they
sinks to the bottom when ye come near. But you tak this'n home and
treat him well and ye'll see him blow out his throat as big as himsel' an'
whistle like a steam engine."
Yan thawed out now. He told about the Lizard he had seen.
"That wasna a Lizard; Ah niver see thim aboot here. It must a been a
two-striped Spelerpes. A Spelerpes is nigh kin to a Frog--a kind of
dry-land tadpole, while a Lizard is only a Snake with legs."
This was light from heaven. All Yan's distrust was gone. He warmed to
the stranger. He plied him with questions; he told of his getting the Bird