A class, with Warren at the head, was on the floor. The girl at the foot was reading in a tone that made it difficult to resist the drowsiness that attacked everyone in the room. She came to a hard word, and, according to our custom, she spelled it. Graybeard, who was sitting with eyes shut, pronounced it for her through a suppressed yawn. A few more words brought her to the end of the paragraph.
A long pause followed; Warren stood with book uplifted, but was gazing intently on something outside. The teacher, recovering from an overbalancing nod, opened his eyes slowly, and lazily called, “Warren!” The boy did not stir. Brush and I looked up from our desk, and shuffled our feet to attract his attention. “Warren!” again called Graybeard, in a louder tone. Still there was no response.
Brush tore a flyleaf out of his book, rolled it hastily into a ball, and threw it at Warren’s head, but missed it.
Graybeard turned in his chair, his eyes rested upon the boy, who was still looking fixedly out of the window. Then he rose, stepped softly up to Warren, seized him by the shoulders and shook him violently, saying, “Are you asleep?”
“Swarming!” rang out the last word of the sentence which Warren was making a desperate effort to utter.
Graybeard, following the eyes of the lad, looked out of the window, “Quick, boys, to the dining-room, take anything you can make a noise with!” he exclaimed, as he sprang to the door, threw it open with a bang and disappeared.
We leaped over desks, and tumbled over each other as we rushed with impetuous haste to the dining-room. Brush caught up an enormous tin pan, Edwin a milk pail, and I the school triangle; the rest of the boys took tin pans and plates, or whatever they could lay their hands on, and we all ran out into the yard. Warren was already following the humming black cloud, ringing the school-bell with all his might. We caught up with him, and began beating on the tin pans with our knuckles, keeping up a constant yelling like a lot of savages. The noise we made was enough to drive the bees and ourselves insane. It was bedlam let loose. On we went through the barnyard, up the hill, and into the woods, closely following the flying black mass. Three boys carrying small mirrors kept throwing flashes of light into the swarm.
The bees made a straight line for a tall oak, hovered over the end of a high branch, and then settled on it. We gathered around the tree, and continued our unearthly noise until Graybeard, with a box and a saw on his shoulder, and a coil of rope on his arm, came up puffing and all in a perspiration.
“Have they settled?” he asked, shading his eyes and looking up into the tree.
“Yes, there they are,” answered Brush, pointing to the writhing black mass on the branch.
“Who can climb?” said Graybeard, looking around among the boys. No one answered. After a while Edwin spoke up, “Lester climb tree like wildcat.”
Lester turned and looked daggers at him. Brush and I nudged each other and giggled. Edwin was playing a joke on Lester.
“Come,” said Graybeard, “there’s no time to be lost.” And he proceeded to tie the end of the rope around the waist of Lester, who had not recovered from his astonishment and was given no time to put in a disclaimer to the title of climber.
Graybeard lifted the lad up as high as he could, then the boy began to climb. He went up slowly but surely, dragging the rope after him. Edwin shouted words of encouragement. “That’s good, go ahead!” he would exclaim as the climber made now and again six inches or so.
“Wait till I get down, I show you!” Lester called back. Then Edwin turned to us and grinned.
The limb upon which the bees had settled was at last reached; the boy pulled up the handsaw that was tied to the other end of the rope. He looked down at us with mischief in his face, then straddled the branch with his face toward the trunk of the tree and began to saw. Graybeard, seeing this, called up in great excitement, “Stop! stop! Lester, stop! Turn the other way.” The boy, having had his fun, turned, and, moving as near to the bees as he dared, began sawing slowly until the branch hung down, then he severed it. It did not fall because before he began to saw he had tied one end of the rope near to the bees, and had fastened the other part near to the place where he was sitting, so that he was able gradually to lower the bees to the ground.
We did not know that anything had happened to Lester until he came down, then we saw that he was stung on the eyebrow and his face was swollen. Brush moistened a bit of earth and smeared it around the injured part to prevent further swelling, but it did no good.
Graybeard put the box over the bees and began pounding the top, “Look under there, Frank, and see if they are going up,” he said; “if the queen goes, they will all go.”
I crouched to the ground and looked into the box; there was great activity and noise. “I think they are going up,” I said.
Suddenly the pounding on the box ceased; I heard an outcry and a groan; I looked up, and there was Graybeard rolling on the ground. He was badly stung in the face. Brush went to his assistance and painted his wounds with mud. I went to the box and pounded as Graybeard had done.
“Look under, Warren, and see what they are doing,” I said.
Warren put his head to the ground and looked, “I guess that old king went
