CHAPTER V. 



A BEE-MAN OF THE "FORTIES. 



The old bee-garden lay on the verge of the wood. Seen 

 from a distance it looked like a great white china bowl 

 brimming over with roses ; but a nearer view changed the 

 porcelain to a snowy barrier of hawthorn, and the roses 

 became blossoming apple-boughs, stretching up into the 

 May sunshine, where all the bees in the world seemed to 

 have forgathered, filling the air with their rich wild chant. 



Coming into the old garden from the glare of the dusty 

 road, the hives themselves were the last thing to rivet atten- 

 tion. As you went up the shady moss-grown path, perhaps 

 the first impresion you became gratefully conscious of was 

 the slow dim quiet of the place — a quiet that had in it all 

 the essentials of silence, and yet was really made up of a 

 myriad blended sounds. Then the sheer carmine of the 

 tulips, in the sunny vista beyond the orchard, came upon 

 you like a trumpet-note through the shadowy aisles of the 

 trees; and after this, in turn, the flaming amber of the 

 marigolds, broad zones of forget-me-nots, like strips of 

 the blue sky fallen, snow-drifts of arabis and starwort, 

 purple pansy-spangles veering to every breeze. And last 

 of all you became gradually aware that every bright nook 

 or shade-dappled corner round you had its nestling bee- 

 skep, half hidden in the general riot of blossom, yet marked 

 by the steadier, deeper song of the homing bees. 



To stand here, in the midst of the hives, of a fine May 

 morning, side by side with the old bee-man, and watch 

 with him for the earliest swarms of the year, was an i^x- 

 perience that took one back far into another and a kindlisr 

 century. There were certain hives in the garden, grey 

 with age and smothered in moss and lichen, that were the 

 traditional mother-colonies of all the rest. The old bee- 

 keeper treasured them as relics of his sturdy manhood, just 

 as he did the percussion fowling-piece over his mantel ; 

 and pointed to one in particular as being close on thirty 



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