hawk flew across the flat near us, his white butcher's apron stained with blood. He was flying low, with some small creature in his talons. It made me break the silence, and I said:
“There's a thing that puzzles me—the cruelty that is in all God's creation. It's a great slaughter-house, and everything that lives has the stain of blood upon it.”
“It all teaches us that death ain't o' much account,” said Uncle Eb. “It looks like cruelty, an' most of us think it a curse. Death is a wonderful blessin'—that's the way it looks to me. Why, Bill Brower, ye've died twice already. Fust the child, then the boy, an' each time ye wove a new body. Bym by yer loom is wore out. Got t' go git a new one. Ye'll begin t' feel as if yer body was a kind of a bad fit.
It'll be too small an' shabby an' un-comf'table.
“I 'member a boy over'n Vermont by the name o' Lem Barker. Grew so fast that the fust he knew his clo's begun to pinch him, an' the bottoms of his pants wouldn't 'sociate with his shoe-leather, an' his hands was way down below his coat sleeves, an' the old suit was wore so thin he didn't dast run er rassle fer fear it would bust an' drop off him. All he could do was to set an' think an' talk an' chaw ter-baccer an' walk as careful as a hen lookin' fer grasshoppers. He hadn't any confidence in that old suit, an' was kind o' 'fraid of it. One day he see a bear, an' it come nec'sary fer him to move quick, an' he split his clo's, an' hed to go hum in a rain-barrel. At fust he thought it was bad luck, but when his