Almost every one in Medford Valley must have slept that morning through the long hours until far past noon. But by four o'clock Oliver had slumbered all his weariness away, and so had Janet. They were restless after their excitement of the night before, and they found the house very still and with Cousin Jasper nowhere visible. They went out to the garage, got into the car, and set off along the familiar way toward the Windy Hill.
"Just to see if they are there," as Oliver said to Janet.
They came up the slope through the grass and saw the blue wood smoke rising lazily above them, unmistakable signal that the Beeman was at work. Polly greeted them gayly, for she, like them, was quite refreshed by the hours of slumber that had passed. Her father still looked weary, as though he had spent the interval in troubled thought rather than sleep, but he hailed them cheerily. All up and down the hill was a subdued and busy humming, for the day after rain is the best of all seasons for bees to gather honey.
"We thought we must find out what the storm had done to our hives," the Beeman said. "Only three were blown over, but there must have been a great commotion. Now we have everything set to rights and we are not in the mood, to tell the truth, for a great deal more work to-day."
"Are you too tired," Janet asked, "for—for a story?"
"No," he answered, "stories come easily for a man who has had training as Polly's father. I thought there was no one like her for demanding stories, but you are just such another."
They sat down on the grass with the broad shadow of the oak tree lying all about them and stretching farther and farther as the afternoon sun moved down the sky. They had chosen the steeper slope of the hill so that they could look down upon the whole length of the winding stream, the scattered house-tops, and the wide green of those gardenlike stretches that still lay, safe and serene, ripening their grain beside the river. The Beeman's eyes moved up and down the valley, resting longest upon the slope opposite, where the yellow farmhouse stood at the edge of its grove of trees and showed its wide gray roof, its white thread of pathway leading up to the door, its row of broad windows that were beginning to flash and shine under the touch of the level rays of the sun.
"Poor Anthony," he said slowly at last, "to be banished from a place he loved so much. And yet a person thinks it a little thing when he first confuses right with wrong!"
He drew a long breath and then turned to the girls with his old cheery smile.
"A story?" he repeated. "It will not be like the others, a tale from old dusty chronicles of Medford Valley, to tell you things that you should know. We have lived the last chapter of that tale and now we will go on to something new."