hought of a way to help you,' said the Master of Life to them.
'From this day you shall have stings. Hereafter, if anyone comes to
steal your honey, you will be able to defend yourselves.'

"The bees were greatly pleased. They were no longer afraid of their
enemies and did not try to hide their storehouses as they had done
before.

"Now the worst of all the enemies of the bee people was Moo-ween the
Black Bear. One day Mr. and Mrs. Moo-ween were walking by a hollow tree
where the bees had made their home. They looked up and saw many of the
bee folk going in and out of a hole in the tree.

"'What lots of honey there must be in that tree,' said Moo-ween. 'How
good it would taste. Let us climb up and take it away from the bees.'
So the two bears began to climb the tree.

"But the bees were not afraid of them. They did not fly away and leave
the bears to eat their honey, as they had always done before. Instead,
they flew down and began to sting the bears. The two bears could not
understand it. They had never been stung before and they groaned and
growled with pain. The bees settled upon their eyes, their ears, and
their noses, and stung them again and again, until they had to let go
of the tree, and fell to the ground. There they rolled over and over,
growling and groaning and snapping their teeth. The bees kept on
stinging them. The bears could not stand it. They got up and ran away as
fast as they could, Since that time the bee folk have had stings and the
courage to use them whenever any creature, little or big, attempts to
annoy or injure them."

[Illustration]

XIII. THE STORY OF THE FIRST SWALLOWS

In May little Luke had watched Mr. and Mrs. Lun-i-fro the Eave Swallows
while they had built their queer, pocket-shaped, mud hut beneath the
eaves of the big barn. He saw them on the muddy shores of the river,
rolling little pellets of mud, which they carried to the barn and built
into their nest, and wondered at their odd ways.

"I wish," he often said to himself, "that they could talk. I would ask
them how they learned to do it." At that time he had no idea he would
ever be able to talk to them.

After he had found the Magic Speech Flower he often talked to Father
and Mother Lun-i-fro. But their talks were always short, for the two
swallows were always too busy chasing gnats and flies through the air
to spend much time on anything else.

Early in September the swallows began to gather in large fl