“I’ll get your children to show me as nearly as they can the place the bees stung this peddler boy, and I’ll look around there for my missing swarm and the queen. They must have made a home for themselves in some hollow tree, those bees must, and when the boy wandered too near it they swarmed out and stung him, for they thought he was after the honey they had stored there.”
“But if the runaway bees rushed out and stung the boy, won’t they come out and sting you if you try to get them back?” asked Mrs. Bunker.
“I’ll wait until cold weather, until the bees are asleep in the tree, and then, if I find them, I can safely bring them in without getting stung,” said Farmer Joel. “It would be strange if your children should be the means of me finding my lost queen. I’d be very glad to get her back.”
“Maybe the peddler boy could tell where the bee tree is,” suggested Adam North.
“I guess he won’t want to talk about bees for a long while,” chuckled Farmer Joel. Dr. Snow had stopped at the farmhouse on his way home after visiting the lad, and had said the boy was badly stung.
“His face is swelled up like a balloon,” said the physician, “and he can’t see out of his eyes. If you want to find that honey tree, Joel, you’ll have to look for it yourself.”
And this Mr. Todd did the next day. As there might be considerable walking to do, only the four older children went along with their father and Farmer Joel.
They reached the first picnic ground and Rose pointed out the flat stump where the lunch had been left before the peddler lad took it. Then, as nearly as they could remember, the children pointed out where in the woods they saw the leaping, slapping peddler boy. For it was there that the bees began to sting him.
“And as so many came out at once it must have been near their honey tree that it happened,” said the farmer.
Laddie and Russ and the two girls followed their father and Mr. Todd over into the woods. It was very still and pleasant, the sun shining down through the green leaves.