"No," said the boy, slowly drawing nearer to her and sitting down at her
feet. "What you want to know they never tell."

Then the children fell into silence, till Doss, the dog, growing uneasy at
its long continuance, sniffed at one and the other, and his master broke
forth suddenly:

"If they could talk, if they could tell us now!" he said, moving his hand
out over the surrounding objects--"then we would know something. This
kopje, if it could tell us how it came here! The 'Physical Geography'
says," he went on most rapidly and confusedly, "that what were dry lands
now were once lakes; and what I think is this--these low hills were once
the shores of a lake; this kopje is some of the stones that were at the
bottom, rolled together by the water. But there is this--How did the water
come to make one heap here alone, in the centre of the plain?" It was a
ponderous question; no one volunteered an answer. "When I was little,"
said the boy, "I always looked at it and wondered, and I thought a great
giant was buried under it. Now I know the water must have done it; but
how? It is very wonderful. Did one little stone come first, and stop the
others as they rolled?" said the boy with earnestness, in a low voice, more
as speaking to himself than to them.

"Oh, Waldo, God put the little kopje here," said Em with solemnity.

"But how did he put it here?"

"By wanting."

"But how did the wanting bring it here?"