When the tin pail was about full an accident happened to Margery. She stepped into something soft and clayey, and the next instant, seeing what it was, she started off by leaps and bounds, crying out the shrill warning: "Run, Willie, run! Bumble bees! I stepped on a bumble bee nest!"
A young gravedigger—if it be correct to call the offspring of an old gravedigger a young gravedigger—caught sight of the poachers just at this moment, and, shouting out, "Hey, there! You!" started toward them down the knoll. The incredible speed with which the poachers fled seemed to give the young gravedigger an erroneous idea of the fear that his presence inspired. There was small likelihood of his overtaking them before they reached the safety of the other side of the fence, but they seemed to him so little to realize this that, for the mere pleasure of pursuit, the young gravedigger pounded on, brandishing his arms and roaring his threats. By the time Margery and Willie made the fence they had so far outdistanced the bees that Willie had courage to face about and shout back defiance to all threats and to show his contempt for the whole race of gravediggers by pointing his thumb to his nose and wriggling his fingers in that same derisive and, it must be conceded, effective manner already mentioned. Although still at a considerable distance, the young gravedigger caught the full meaning of the insult and almost exploded with rage.
"You—you little——" he began. But he did not finish. They saw him stop suddenly, look up, and then, flinging his arms over his head, rush madly back the way he had just come.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Willie Jones shouted, hopping up and down in the intensity of his enjoyment. "Margery, do you see him? The bees are after him! Jiminy! Jiminy! Jiminy!"
Willie Jones lay down on the ground and rolled and kicked and plucked up handfuls of grass in an effort to work off the exuberance of his joy.
"Oh!" he gasped weakly, as the humor of the situation finally expended itself. "Isn't that the funniest thing you ever saw?"
"Margery, do you see him? The bees are after him!"
As Margery made no answer, he turned, suddenly conscious that from the start she had not been sharing his transports.