ped the arch we saw a Foresters' band with banners marching down
the street.

'That's all very fine,' said the Agent-General, 'but in real life things
have a knack of happening without approaching--'

* * * * *

(Some schools of Thought hold that Time is not; and that when we attain
complete enlightenment we shall behold past, present, and future as One
Awful Whole. I myself have nearly achieved this.)

* * * * *

We dipped over the bridge into the village. A boy on a bicycle, loaded
with four paper bonnet-boxes, pedalled towards us, out of an alley on
our right. He bowed his head the better to overcome the ascent, and
naturally took his left. Mr. Lingnam swerved frantically to the right.
Penfentenyou shouted. The boy looked up, saw the car was like to squeeze
him against the bridge wall, flung himself off his machine and across
the narrow pavement into the nearest house. He slammed the door at the
precise moment when the car, all brakes set, bunted the abandoned
bicycle, shattering three of the bonnet-boxes and jerking the fourth
over the unscreened dashboard into Mr. Lingnam's arms.

There was a dead stillness, then a hiss like that of escaping steam, and
a man who had been running towards us ran the other way.

'Why! I think that those must be bees,' said Mr. Lingnam.

They were--four full swarms--and the first living objects which he had
remarked upon all day.

Some one said, 'Oh, God!' The Agent-General went out over the back of
the car, crying resolutely: 'Stop the traffic! Stop the traffic, there!'
Penfentenyou was already on the pavement ringing a door-bell, so I had
both their rugs, which--for I am an apiarist--I threw over my head.
While I was tucking my trousers into my socks--for I am an apiarist of
experience--Mr. Lingnam picked up the unexploded bonnet-box and with a
single magnificent gesture (he told us afterwards he thought there was a
river beneath) hurled it over the parapet of the bridge, ere he ran
across the road towards the village green. Now, the station platform
immediately below was crowded with Foresters and their friends waiting
to welcome a delegation from a sister Court. I saw the box burst on the
flint edging of the station garden and the contents sweep forward
cone-wise like shrapnel. But the result was stimulating rather than
sedative. All those well-dressed people below shouted like Sodom and
Gomorrah. Then they mov