Immediately we started back to our cell, for it was henceforth to be his also.
“It is strange,” he said. “I do not understand it. Life and death are in her keeping, and yet she knows it not. You and I don’t count for much. We pass like the leaves, but life everlasting lingers in her body—the very spirit of things ranges through her. But I am content with my insignificant place, to live my life, doing my duty from day to day.”
I did not answer him. We fell silent as we made our way across the combs.
“Suppose we take a turn in the woods,” he suddenly suggested, wheeling about and heading for the door. “I have new bearings to get and you have new lands to explore.”
“I supposed you knew this country,” I ventured.
“I do, but the way to this new home of mine must be learned.”
Out into the air we hurried, but he flew back and forth many times before our door. He wanted to make sure that he knew it; then, flying round and round in ever wider circles, we mounted with ecstasy into the higher reaches. Lake Espantoso, with its border of great oaks, lay below us like a bar of silver; and the Master’s house stood like a sentinel beside the white hives which, row on row, spread beneath us in the sun.
“That prominent knoll,” said Crip, “is a thing to remember, if you are returning late and flying low. And remember, too, that in that window of the Master’s house a lantern burns. This may sometimes be a guide. But, mark you, never fly into it, though you may be tempted. Better still, get in before it is too dark. Just there by that row of hives is a tree to remember. It is a glory in the spring with its yellow flowers, until the cutting ants get it. They clip off the leaves and blossoms. But it is an excellent land-mark, nevertheless. And there’s the Master,” went on Crip, “and the Little One, and that horrid dog. That little boy sits by for hours while the great one labors with some of us. The horrid dog sleeps—I’d like to sting him. Things will go wrong—the Master sets them to rights. He seems to know everything; and yet, when he took away some of our honey, in spite of our having vast stores of it, we fought him. The little he took harmed us not at all, and I suppose we fight him because our brothers have done so for centuries. But I talk too much.”
After a rather long flight, and much interesting converse, we reached our door again. Crip’s experience with the guard was still fresh in his mind, for he clung closely to me for protection. But the guard this time passed him without a word. He had acquired the scent and the note of the hive, and henceforth his life and all the energies of his body would be merged with that of the colony.