ar for an insect--from "the little
speedwell's darling blue" upon the hedge-bank, and just as she was
moistening the load, gathered ready to fly off, delivered its final
ultimatum--a marvelously persistent murderer. This time it, or,
rather, she, was received with the point--the poisoned point--and,
turning like a spent lightning-flash to avoid it, found the queen hard
on her heels, following all down the gay hedge-ditch, humming high, in
nearly a shriek of rage. Finally, she turned, to do battle for her
life, and the two, grappling, fell as shooting-stars fall, gleaming,
athwart the sun, with a brrr-r like a fused wire, and finished the job,
rolling over and over on the ground--rolling over and over among the
stalks of bluebells, like the heavens "upraising from the earth."

It is written, however, that few in the insect world can withstand a
queen of the yellow devils, and in a few seconds the wasp got up and
flew home again, quite unperturbed. The robber-fly did not get up, and
she was not quite unperturbed, but died as they die who are poisoned
with formic acid, and very soon was still.

By the time the shadows crept across the entrance to the derelict
mole-hole, warning the wasp back--for your true wasp is a worshiper of
the sun--the queen had formed a disc of paper, and suspended
there-from, in the middle, a stalk, also of paper, which widened out at
its base, and became, as it were, the outlines of four six-sided cells.
The cells were in the shape of a cross--that cross which you will
always find at the foundation of the cities of the waspfolk, and, in a
way, a sign or mark of their nationality--the cross in the
market-square, so to speak, outwards from which the city grew.

The queen, satisfied apparently with her new city so far, hung up and
went to sleep. When anything or anybody came to prospect for house
lots, or edible victims, during the still, silent, silver night, she
hummed very severely, like an electric fan, to let the intruders know
who she was, and they mostly backed out again in a hurry. If they took
a step nearer the hum rose an octave, and became very wicked, and that,
so far as most of them were concerned, finished it.

Two, however, there were who would not take even that hint. One was a
shrew-mouse, thirsting for blood, but who got poison instead, and next
morning was found running about with his mouth somewhere concealed
behind his ear, if one may be pardoned the expression, in conse