Polly left the fire at last, bringing a plate of hot biscuits, and sat
down beside the table.

"Daddy always tells me a story when we have finished with the bees,"
she began a little shyly. "He said he had one saved up in his head
that I would especially like. You won't mind our going on with it,
will you?"

Oliver would not mind at all. He felt assured already that he would
like anything that the Beeman had to say.

"I suppose you must have it, if your heart is set on it," Polly's
father said, "but my tales are usually designed for an audience of
only one. This young gentleman may not like our style of stories, my
dear."

"I hope he will," replied Polly, "but--oh, daddy, I forgot all about
it, didn't we have an engagement some time about now, at home?"

"No," he returned so positively that his daughter, though at first a
little puzzled, seemed quite satisfied. "It is quite all right for us
to stay here."

He chuckled for a moment, as though over some private joke of his own,
then at last laid down his pipe and crossed his legs. Oliver leaned
back against the wall and Polly curled up on the bench by the
fireplace.

"Are you both quite comfortable?" the Beeman inquired. "Very well,
then I'll begin."

CHAPTER II

THE SEVEN BROTHERS OF THE SUN

Nashola did not live in fairyland, although there were seasons when
his country was so beautiful that it might well have belonged to some
such enchanted place. He did not know whether he loved it best when
the thickets were all in bloom with pink crab apple and the brown,
wintry hills had put on their first spring green, or when every valley
was scarlet and golden with frost-touched maple trees in the autumn.
But to-day it was neither, being hot midsummer, with the wild grass
thick and soft on the slope of the hill that he was climbing, and with
the heavy foliage of the oak tree on the summit rustling in a hot,
fitful breeze. It was high noontide with the sunlight all about him,
yet Nashola walked warily and looked back more than once at his
comrades who had dared follow him only halfway up the hill. His was no
ordinary errand, for, all about him, Nashola felt dangers that he
could neither hear nor see. Before him, sitting motionless as a
statue, with his back against the trunk of the oak tree and his keen,
hawk-like face turned toward the hills and the sky, was Secotan, the
sorcerer and medicine man, whom all of Nashola's tribe praised,
revered, and dreade