114 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
the rocky boulders strewing the bed of the tortuous 
Devon stream. 
Here and there in the sunny field-of-view visible 
through the arched doorway, black-robed figures 
were quietly at work: some digging; others 
gathering apples in the orchard; one sturdy brother 
was mowing the Abbot’s lawn, the bright blade 
coming perilously near his fluttering skirts at every 
stroke; another went by trundling a wheelbarrow 
full of green vegetables for the refectory table. 
There was a distant cackle of poultry, blending oddly 
with the solemn chant that came from the chapel 
hard by. Robins sang everywhere, and starlings 
clucked and whistled in the valerian that topped the 
great encircling wall. But wherever you looked, 
whatever drew away your attention for the 
moment, you were sure to come back to the con- 
sideration of one preponderant yet inexplicable 
thing. A steady, deep note was upon the air. 
Rich and resonant, it seemed to come from all 
directions at once. The dim, grey-vaulted entrance- 
porch was full of it. Looking up into the dusk of 
oaken beams overhead, there it seemed at its 
strangest and loudest. Queerest fact of all, it 
appeared to have some mysterious affinity with the 
sunshine, for when a stray white argosy of cloud 
came drifting over the azure and obscured for a 
minute the glad light, this full, sonorous note died 
suddenly away, rising as swiftly again to its old 
power and volume when the sunbeams glowed back 
once more over the spacious garden, and over the 
riverside willows that shed their gold of dying 
leafage with every breath of the soft south wind. 
It was not until you stepped outside, and looked 
