then just bursting forth into the blossom.  Various other flowers had also appeared, and around them were buzzing thousands of bees.  These industrious little animals were hard at work, loading themselves with sweets; little foreseeing the robbery contemplated by the craft of man.  As le Bourdon moved stealthily among the flowers and their humming visitors, the eyes of the two red men followed his smallest movement, as the cat watches the mouse; but Gershom was less attentive, thinking the whole curious enough, but preferring whiskey to all the honey on earth.

At length le Bourdon found a bee to his mind, and watching the moment when the animal was sipping sweets from a head of white clover, he cautiously placed his blurred and green-looking tumbler over it, and made it his prisoner.  The moment the bee found itself encircled with the glass, it took wing and attempted to rise.  This carried it to the upper part of its prison, when Ben carefully introduced the unoccupied hand beneath the glass, and returned to the stump.  Here he set the tumbler down on the platter in a way to bring the piece of honeycomb within its circle.

So much done successfully, and with very little trouble, Buzzing Ben examined his captive for a moment, to make sure that all was right.  Then he took off his cap and placed it over tumbler, platter, honeycomb, and bee.  He now waited half a minute, when cautiously raising the cap again, it was seen that the bee, the moment a darkness like that of its hive came over it, had lighted on the comb, and commenced filling itself with the honey.  When Ben took away the cap altogether, the head and half of the body of the bee was in one of the cells, its whole attention being bestowed on this unlooked-for hoard of treasure.  As this was just what its captor wished, he considered that part of his work accomplished.  It now became apparent why a glass was used to take the bee, instead of a vessel of wood or of bark.  Transparency was necessary in order to watch the movements of the captive, as darkness was necessary in order to induce it to cease its efforts to escape, and to settle on the comb.

As the bee was now intently occupied in filling itself, Buzzing Ben, or le Bourdon, did not hesitate about removing the glass.  He even ventured to look around him, and to make another captive, which he placed over the comb, and managed as he had done with the first.  In a minute, the second bee was also buried in a cell, and the glass was again removed.  Le Bourdon now signed for his companions to draw near.

“There they are, hard at work with the honey,” he said, speaking in English, and pointing at the bees.  “Little do they think, as they undermine that comb, how near they are to the undermining of their own hive!  But so it is with us all!  When we think we are in the highest prosperity we may be nearest to a fall, and when we are poorest and hum-blest, we may be about to be exalted.  I often think of these things, out here in the wilderness, when I’m alone, and my thoughts are acTYVE.”