"Fancy; Queen Fancy, if you please; so I am called, although, to be sure, there is not much royal state among our folk."
"I beg your pardon, Madam Fancy! And now I—fancy that I can explain the beautiful repose that lies over the face of Nature in this royal month of June. I have just been meditating upon it with delight. How peaceful, how lovely in their peacefulness are all things around us! Yes, I see how it is! The good Brownies are abroad upon the landscape, and they have thrown the light and sweetness of their own natures upon these scenes. What a happy people you are, free from all conflict and care, and how happy those who feel the spell of your influence!"
"Oh! O-o-oh!" A chorus of exclamations uttered in a deprecating tone broke from the whole Brownie company.
I started, and looked around surprised beyond measure at this outburst of protesting voices. Then followed a moment of silence.
Queen Fancy spoke at last. "Yes, it is just as I supposed," she said. "You are yet a novice in Nature lore. You have much to learn, all you mortals have, ere you can know the true life of the inferior creatures. There is another side to Nature, I assure you, a very sad side, too. Come, I must teach you to read between the lines!"
She touched me with a tiny staff or wand. My mind at once was wide awake and all its faculties more alert than usual. But, curiously, the Brownies had disappeared! I wondered at this, but presently a series of incidents caught my attention which for the time quite banished all thought of my new acquaintances.
A long line of Sanguine Ants,[D] the Red Slavemakers, filed by me in irregular columns and crossed the walk to their nest which, as you know, is placed close by the fence nearly opposite the barn. The warriors carried in their jaws the plunder of a nest of Fuscous Ants which I have already said lies to the right under the verge of the Elm's shadow. Some warriors had yellowish cocoons, some white larvæ, a few carried the bodies (living or dead I could not determine) of their victims, and several bore upon their legs the severed heads of the poor blacks who had been slain in defence of their home, and whose decapitated heads still clung to their foes fixed in the rigor of death. I rose and followed up the column of Sanguines to the nest which they were plundering. Some of the kidnappers were plunging into the opened gates, others issuing therefrom laden with their stolen booty, others were engaged in fierce battle with groups of the invaded Fuscas. Only a few of the latter were inclined to fight. They seemed, for the most part, dazed by their misfortune. Numbers hung to the topmost leaves and stalks of the surrounding grass and weeds, holding in their jaws baby larvæ and cocoon cradles rescued from the invaders, with which they had hurriedly fled to the nearest elevated objects. It was truly a pitiful sight, and I began to wax indignant at the Sanguine wretches who could work such domestic misery and ruin.
Fig. 3.—A Red Slavemaker Ant with its Plunder.
"Ah!" said a faint voice close by my ear, "yet this is Nature!"