e I was
dancing about, and wringing my hand, and crying, on account of the
pain, my companions were doing quite another thing: they were holding
a laughing concert, at my expense.

It is hardly necessary to add, that my white-faced bumble-bee turned
out to be an enemy in disguise. After that event, I made a closer
examination of the faces of this class of insects, and became
satisfied that there was one tribe of bumble-bees who wore a face of a
pale yellow color, resembling somewhat the genuine borer, but who, for
all that, could sting as well as any of their race with black faces.

This feat was as near as I ever got toward the glory of capturing a
nest of bumble-bees. I have tasted the honey which came from their
nests, though, many a time, and I have seen other boys capture the
nests.

Billy Bolton was a great fellow at that kind of sport. Billy lived
with Uncle Mike. He did _chores_--to use a word common enough in New
England, though, possibly, not an elegant one--on Mr. Marble's farm;
that is, he went for the cows and drove them to pasture, fed the pigs
and poultry, brought water and chips for the "women folks," and ran of
errands.

It was a favorite sport with Billy, in the summer time, to hunt for
bumble-bees' nests, and to "take them up," as the process of capturing
them was called. Uncle Mike did not like to indulge the boy in this
kind of sport. Perhaps he thought it a cruel and unfeeling kind of
fun; and I know he had too kind a heart, to see a boy growing up in
his family with a taste for cruelty to animals of any kind. At any
rate, the danger connected with the sport was enough to condemn it in
the mind of Mr. Marble.

He had forbidden Billy and his own children having any thing to do
with the sport. Still, it seemed Billy found means to amuse himself,
now and then, in a sly way, by taking up a bumble-bees' nest.

One day, Mr. Marble and his men were engaged in the meadow, raking hay
and carting it into the barn. Billy was in the meadow, too, at work
among the hay, raking after the cart, I presume, as that used to be
the task always allotted to me when I was of his age. In a corner of
the lot, at some distance from the place where Mr. Marble and his men
were at work, there was a large bottle containing water--nothing but
water, reader; there was no rum drank on Mr. Marble's farm. Billy was
sent after the bottle. He was gone a good while--longer, Mr. Marble
thought, than was necessary. The matter was