“Let us go to her at once.”
In we went, and while I was shaken by the news which I did not fully comprehend, I was sobered and silent. I should probably have had no thought of death at all had I known what lay before us, the midnight ways we were to tread.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Death of the Queen
As we hurried in search of her, on all sides there was wailing: “Ai—ai—ai! Woe—woe—woe! Our Queen is dead!”
A spirit of dread and disaster filled the place and shook us mightily. Crip said never a word.
“I remember you told me once you had lost your Queen-Mother—that was the time I found you in the hive that we robbed. You were going to tell me about it.”
“Yes; but now it is too late—it is terrible. You do not understand—”
At length we came to where she lay asleep on the bottom-board of the house she had graced for so short a space. Around her surged her children, weeping for the queenly dead.