THE DEBACLE. 165 
the bank. But the wind took her, and carried 
her far out of her course ; and a glossy, shining, 
speckled starling nearly did likewise; and by 
the time she reached the unobtrusive-looking 
hole—it had once belonged to a field-mouse, 
long since executed by an owl—under the 
tamarisk-roots, she was tired and angry. 
Here she ran in. 
It was dark and stuffy inside, but she 
needed no eyes to tell fer all about it. Her 
feelers did all that, and more—they were eyes 
and everything else to her. 
The hole widened as she got in, and became 
a chamber, roofed with a bundle of moss, walled 
with moss, and almost cosy. In the chamber 
were cells—honey-cells, brood-cells, all kinds 
of cells, made of wax; but they were not, as 
we know, honey-cells. Brown they were, 
misshapen, and just tacked on anywhere. In 
fact, there was no order about them. They 
were distinctly opposite to the mathematical 
tidiness of the humble-bee’s relations, the 
honey-bees. 
Our little friend met one or two bees as she 
crawled in, but the place was not full. It 
bore an air of approaching ruin about it. 
Time had been when four hundred bumble- 
bees had worked there from 4 a.m. to nearly 
any time P.M. Now she met but a few. 
