th," said the Queen's voice behind them. They had
not heard the heavy royal footfall which sets empty cells vibrating.
Sacharissa offered her food at once. She ate and dragged her weary body
forward. "Can you suggest a remedy?" she said.

"New principles!" cried the Wax-moth from her crevice. "We'll apply them
quietly later."

"Suppose we sent out a swarm?" Melissa suggested. "It's a little late,
but it might ease us off."

"It would save us, but--I know the Hive! You shall see for yourself."
The old Queen cried the Swarming Cry, which to a bee of good blood
should be what the trumpet was to Job's war-horse. In spite of her
immense age (three, years), it rang between the canon-like frames as a
pibroch rings in a mountain pass; the fanners changed their note, and
repeated it up in every gallery; and the broad-winged drones, burly and
eager, ended it on one nerve-thrilling outbreak of bugles: "La Reine le
veult! Swarm! Swar-rm! Swar-r-rm!"

But the roar which should follow the Call was wanting. They heard a
broken grumble like the murmur of a falling tide.

"Swarm? What for? Catch me leaving a good bar-frame Hive, with fixed
foundations, for a rotten, old oak out in the open where it may rain any
minute! We're all right! It's a 'Patent Guaranteed Hive.' Why do they
want to turn us out? Swarming be gummed! Swarming was invented to cheat
a worker out of her proper comforts. Come on off to bed!"

The noise died out as the bees settled in empty cells for the night.

"You hear?" said the Queen. "I know the Hive!"

"Quite between ourselves, I taught them that," cried the Wax-moth.
"Wait till my principles develop, and you'll see the light from a new
quarter."

"You speak truth for once," the Queen said suddenly, for she recognized
the Wax-moth. "That Light will break into the top of the Hive. A Hot
Smoke will follow it, and your children will not be able to hide in any
crevice."

"Is it possible?" Melissa whispered. "I-we have sometimes heard a legend
like it."

"It is no legend," the old Queen answered. "I had it from my mother, and
she had it from hers. After the Wax-moth has grown strong, a Shadow will
fall across the gate; a Voice will speak from behind a Veil; there will
be Light, and Hot Smoke, and earthquakes, and those who live will see
everything that they have done, all together in one place, burned up in
one great fire." The old Queen was trying to tell what she had been told
of the Bee Master's dealing