o die rather than let go, hung to his arms and legs and
feelers, and their stings were beginning to pierce between the
rings of his breast. Maya saw him drop down exhausted. Without
cry or complaint, fighting to the very end, neither suing for
mercy nor reviling his opponents, he went down to his brigand's
death.

The bees left him and hurried back to the entrance to throw
themselves anew into the conflict.

Maya's heart was beating stormily. She slipped over to the
hornet. He lay curled up in the twilight, still breathing. She
counted about twenty stings, most of them in the fore part of
his body, leaving his golden armor quite whole and sound. Seeing
he was still alive, she hurried away to bring water and
honey--to cheer the dying man, she thought. But he shook his
head and waived her off with his hand.

"I _take_ what I want," he said proudly. "I don't care for
gifts."

"Oh," said Maya, "I only thought you might be thirsty."

The young officer smiled at her, then said, not sadly, but with
a strange earnestness:

"I must die."

The little bee could not reply. For the first time in her life
she seemed to comprehend what it meant to have to die; and death
seemed much closer when someone else was about to die than when
her own life had been imperiled in the spider's web.

"If there were only _some_thing I could do," she said, and burst
into tears.

The dying hornet made no answer. He opened his eyes once again
and heaved a deep breath--for the last time. Half an hour later
he was thrown down into the grass outside the hive along with
his dead comrades.

Little Maya never forgot what she had learned from this brief
farewell. She knew now for all time that her enemies were beings
like herself, loving life as she did and having to die a hard
death without succor. She thought of the flower sprite who had
told her of his rebirth when Nature sent forth her blossoms
again in the spring; and she longed to know whether the other
creatures would, like the sprite, come back to the light of life
after they had died the death of the earth.

"I will believe it is so," she said softly.

A messenger now came and summoned her to the queen's presence.
She found the full court assembled in the royal reception room.
Her legs shook, she scarcely dared to raise her eyes before her
monarch and so many dignitaries. A number of the officers of
the queen's staff were missing, and the gathering was unusually
solemn. Yet a gleam