68 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
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. 
““ Briled 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 undergrowth of many years; but 
be 
