. Filled with curiosity, he
went forward to investigate, munching, as he went, a yellow June apple
that he had picked up in the grass.

A rough lane opened before him, that passed through the orchard and
wound up the hill, with its high grass trodden a little as though,
after all, people did sometimes pass that way. He had climbed only a
little way when he heard voices.

The tumble-down cottage was not empty, as he had thought, for two
people were standing in the doorway. He stopped abruptly. The man in
worn overalls and the girl beside him, with her bobbed hair, bright
eyes, and faded pink gingham apron, did not look like a very
forbidding pair. But Oliver's uneasy conscience made him feel that any
person he met might guess his plans in some mysterious way and
interfere with his escape. Very quietly he turned about and began to
hurry down the hill. He had retreated too late, however, for the man
had seen him and proceeded to call after him in what seemed a very
peremptory tone:

"Stop!"

For a moment, Oliver hesitated, uncertain whether to obey or to take
to his heels and seek safety in the wood below. Could the man have
read his secret, or was the apple in his hand the cause of the
summons? Before he could really decide, the girl's voice was raised
also--pleading and urgent.

"We need you," she called. "You must help us. Oh, don't go away!"

He turned slowly and went toward them through the tall grass,
uncertain, suspicious, afraid even yet that he might fall into some
trap that would delay his flight. His uneasiness was not in any way
quieted by his seeing that one of the white boxes stood, uncovered,
before the two and that it was a beehive.

"You have come just in time," said the man, "if you are willing to
help us. It is a difficult business, hiving a swarm of bees at this
season, and Polly, here, is no use at all. This is her first day with
the bees this year, and she jumps up and down when they sing around
her head, and that stops everything."

"I do better usually," the girl confessed humbly, "but I forget, over
the winter, how to be quiet and calm when a million bees are buzzing
in my ear."

She thrust into Oliver's hand the leather and metal bellows that blows
wood smoke into the hive, and her father began giving him directions
as unconcernedly as though his helping were a matter of course.

"Just stand beside me, stay very still, and keep blowing smoke; that
is right. Don't move and never mind