In a Bee-Camp. 



last amber gleam of sunset abiding under the flinching 

 silver of the stars. 



The camp-fire crackled and hissed, and the pot sent 

 forth a savoury steam into the morning air. From the 

 heather the deep chant of busy thousands came over on 

 the wings of the breeze, bringing with it the very spirit of 

 serene content. The bee-master rose and stirred the pot 

 ruminatively. 



''B'iled rabbit !" said he, looking up, with the light of 

 old memories coming in his gnarled brown face. "And 

 forty years ago, when I first came to the heather, it used 

 to be b'iled rabbit too. We could set a snare in those days 

 as well as now. But 'twas only a few hives then, a dozen 

 or so of old straw skeps on a barrow, and naught but the 

 starry night for a roof-tree, or a sack or two to keep off 

 the rain. None of your women's luxuries in those times !" 



He looked round rather disparagingly at his own tent, 

 with its plain truckle-bed, and tin wash-bowl, and other 

 deplorable signs of effeminate self-indulgence. 



" But there was one thing," he went on '* one thing we 

 used to bring to the moors that never comes now. And that 

 was the basket of sulphur-rag. When the honey-flow is 

 done, and the waggons come to fetch us home again, all the 

 hives will go back to their places in the garden none the 

 worse for their trip. But in the old days of bee-burning 

 never a bee of all the lot returned from the moors. Come 

 a little way into the long grass yonder, and I'll show ye 

 the way of it. ' ' 



With a stick he threshed about in the dry bents, and 

 soon lay bare a^row of circular cavities in the ground. They 

 were almost choked up with moss and the rank under- 

 growth of many years; but originally they must have been 

 each about ten inches broad by as many deep. 



" These," said the bee-master, with a shamefaced air 

 of confession, " were the sulphur-pits. I dug them the 

 first year I ever brought hives to the heather; and here, for 

 twenty seasons or more, some of the finest and strongest 

 stocks in Sussex were regularly done to death. 'Tis a drab 

 tale to tell, but we knew no better then. To get the honey 

 away from the bees looked well-nigh impossible with thou- 

 sands of them clinging all over the combs. And it never 

 occurred to any of us to try the other way, and get the bees 



47 



