ried Sacharissa. "The Great Burning that Our Queen foretold.
Who can bear to look?"

A flame crawled up the pile of rubbish, and they smelt singeing wax.

The Figures stooped, lifted the Hive and shook it upside down over the
pyre. A cascade of Oddities, chips of broken comb, scale, fluff, and
grubs slid out, crackled, sizzled, popped a little, and then the flames
roared up and consumed all that fuel.

"We must disinfect," said a Voice. "Get me a sulphur-candle, please."

The shell of the Hive was returned to its place, a light was set in
its sticky emptiness, tier by tier the Figures built it up, closed the
entrance, and went away. The swarm watched the light leaking through
the cracks all the long night. At dawn one Wax-moth came by, fluttering
impudently.

"There has been a miscalculation about the New Day, my dears," she
began; "one can't expect people to be perfect all at once. That was our
mistake."

"No, the mistake was entirely ours," said the Princess.

"Pardon me," said the Wax-moth. "When you think of the enormous
upheaval--call it good or bad--which our influence brought about, you
will admit that we, and we alone--"

"You?" said the Princess. "Our stock was not strong. So you came--as any
other disease might have come. Hang close, all my people."

When the sun rose, Veiled Figures came down, and saw their swarm at the
bough's end waiting patiently within sight of the old Hive--a handful,
but prepared to go on.

THE BEES AND THE FLIES

A FARMER of the Augustan age
Perused in Virgil's golden page,
The story of the secret won
From Proteus by Cyrene's son
How the dank sea-god sowed the swain
Means to restore his hives again
More briefly, how a slaughtered bull
Breeds honey by the bellyful.

The egregious rustic put to death
A bull by stopping of its breath:
Disposed the carcass in a shed
With fragrant herbs and branches spread.
And, having thus performed the charm,
Sat down to wait the promised swarm.

Nor waited long... The God of Day
Impartial, quickening with his ray
Evil and good alike, beheld
The carcass--and the carcass swelled!
Big with new birth the belly heaves
Beneath its screen of scented leaves;
Past any