two palms, held together cup-like.

Now he permitted one to crawl out, and it shot away as a rifle ball
toward a clump of trees some half a mile distant. This was the sheriff's
first clue.

Carefully he climbed the worm fence--for it would not do to crush even
so lightly his four remaining captives--and strode blithely on. But he
was a long time reaching the trees; for a man, holding his two hands out
before him, delicately clasped and protecting bees, who must cross
fences and scramble through ravines, does not travel with the rapidity
of thought.

At the edge of the wood he released a second bee, watching it with the
same intentness as it darted off; and, having walked to about the spot
where it had disappeared, he let out prisoner number three. Of course,
on the same direct line this one went--for wild bees thus captured and
set at liberty abandon all desire for further work, and in a panic rush
headlong to their hive; in this way the wild hives are found. But the
fourth very soon swerved upward into the branches of a hollow black-gum
tree. Chuckling now, Jess indifferently freed the remaining captive; for
the search was ended, the treasure house was his. He pressed his ear
against the bark and listened. A low, incessant buzzing sound was there,
as though these five excited wanderers were recounting their adventure
to the agitated colony.

Having marked the place, the sheriff pressed on through the wood to a
neighboring farm house where he prevailed upon one Hod Fugit, to
accompany him with axe and buckets. The prudent Hod would have brought a
veil had Jess not laughed him out of it--for Jess, secure within
himself, would have the fun go as far as it could be stretched. An hour
later the black-gum tree came ripping, crashing to earth.

The intelligence, or instinct, of the bee has furnished inspiration for
many pens. Centuries prior to Maeterlinck, even before Pliny, Virgil,
Varro and Aristotle, those warmly constructed little insects, hailed by
the ancients as Winged Servants of the Muses, have been immortalized.
But, however much has been extolled their intelligence, or instinct, in
no page is it transcribed that their heads, or brains, or hearts are the
regions wherewith they argue; and, when this honey had been gathered,
Hod's rotundity of countenance was not all cheer. This, because man's
sense of humor is an enigmatical product, afforded Jess many pleasant
chuckles as he trudged, now with a full bucket of