118 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
clamour of carpenters’ tools; the faint, sickly smell 
from the wax-boilers; all the familiar evidences of 
bee-farming carried on in the most modern, 
twentieth-century way. : 
As you look down the long, trim avenue of 
gaily-painted hives your companion has a quiet 
side-glance upon you, obviously noting your 
disappointment. 
“What would you? ”’ says he, and his deep voice 
rings like a passing-bell for all your dreams. 
“Everything must move with the times, or must 
inevitably perish. Modernism, rightly understood, 
is God’s fairest, most priceless gift to the universe. 
It is a crucible through which all things of true 
metal must pass to lose the accumulated dross of 
the ages, keeping their original pure substance, but 
taking the new shape required of them by latter- 
day needs. It is so with the old, dim windows of 
man’s faith; daily the glass is being taken out, 
smelted down, purified, replaced; we can see abroad 
into distances now never before visible. And so it 
must prove even with bee-keeping, which is one of 
the oldest human occupations in the world.”’ 
He waves his hand towards the sunny prospect 
before you. Beyond the river the burning apple- 
woods soar steadily upward; and high above these, 
stretching away to meet the blue sky, lie the Devon 
moorlands, once all rose-red with blossoming 
heather, but now, parched and brown, except where 
a grey crag or rock puts forth its jagged head. 
“It is a fine thing, perhaps,’’ says the Abbot, 
thoughtfully swinging his silver cross in the sun- 
beams, ‘‘to love old, ignorant customs, old, 
benighted, useless errors, for their picturesqueness 
