I did not waste many minutes in reaching the garden. What a sight met my eyes! The broad path stretched itself out before me smooth and wet; not a single hole remained,--all were buried deep under the sand. Instead of the air being, as was usual, fairly alive with busy, happy creatures, there was now, here and there, a miserable mud-covered insect clinging to a leaf, and wearily trying to clean its heavy wings.
What a sad ending to the gay, bright summer!
The next day, however, I found a few survivors hard at work digging again; but this time every hole was sloping instead of perpendicular. After much thought, I came to the conclusion that these clever little creatures had found the way to prevent such another calamity as had overtaken them the day before. Formerly, the first drops of an unusually hard shower filled the holes instantly, drowning the inmates. Now, this could not happen, especially if the openings were placed, as most of them were, under the shelter of the big grape-leaves which at many points rested on the edge of the path. This all took place two years ago; but each summer since then has brought with it some of our old friends, the digger-wasps.
Jules Vatermann was a wood-cutter, and a very good one. He always had employment, for he understood his business so well, and was so industrious and trustworthy, that every one in the neighborhood where he lived, who wanted wood cut, was glad to get him to do it.
Jules had a very ordinary and commonplace life until he was a middle-aged man, and then something remarkable happened to him. It happened on the twenty-fifth of January, in a very cold winter. Jules was forty-five years old, that year, and he remembered the day of the month, because in the morning, before he started out to his work, he had remarked that it was just one month since Christmas.
The day before, Jules had cut down a tall tree, and he had been busy all the morning sawing it into logs of the proper length and splitting it up and making a pile of it.
When dinner-time came around, Jules sat down on one of the logs and opened his basket. He had plenty to eat,--good bread and sausage, and a bottle of beer, for he was none of your poor wood-cutters.