“I expect I’ll want you a long time, Joe!” she said.
A sudden noise at the door made Alice hurriedly snatch up the knife again. Carl kicked the door open and came in, veiled and gloved, lugging a heavy super of combs.
“See here what I found in one of the combs!” he exclaimed. He set down the super and held out a brown lump. “It was in one of the combs that came from the South. The bees had built a ball of wax around it. They didn’t like it, I guess. A souvenir of the old bayou, eh?”
Joe took up the lump of beeswax, which Carl had pinched open. In its center was a conical dark object, encysted in the wax, buried as the bees will do with an object which they dislike but are unable to remove entirely. He picked out the hard little lump and held it up.
It was a flattened leaden bullet.
THE END