hem through the field and pasture, down to the
yard by the Little Sea.

Thomas I had met already. His sister Catherine looked to be a little
older than Ellen. She and our girls appeared to be great friends and
rapidly exchanged a stock of small news and confidences. I felt bashful
about drawing near them, to receive an introduction; but Ellen brought
her young neighbor around, near where I was helping the other boys pen
up the sheep, and informed her that I was the new cousin who had come to
live at the farm, and hence that we must needs become acquainted.
Catherine and I did not become much acquainted, however, for months
afterwards.

Thomas and Catherine had an older brother, who did not appear with them
that morning. Mr. Edwards himself was a strong, weather-browned farmer,
then about forty-five years of age. Addison explained to them the
workings of his water-warming apparatus, and showed them where fuel
could be gathered for a fire beneath the pipes; we then returned to go
to our work. Before we had gone to the field, however, another
interruption occurred. A swarm of bees came out of one of the hives, at
the bee-house in the garden, and after mounting in a dense, brown cloud
into the air over the hives, settled upon the limb of a large apple
tree, a few rods distant. Gram bustled out with a pan and began drumming
noisily upon it, to drown the hum of the queen bee, as she said, and
thus prevent the swarm from flying away.

Meantime the Old Squire was putting on a veil and gloves, and then came
out with a saw in his hand, while Addison brought forth a new hive which
had been hurriedly rinsed out with salt and water.

"Fetch a ladder, quick!" was the order to Halstead and me.

Theodora had brought the clothes-line, which Addison hastily took from
her hands, and climbing the apple tree, attached one end of it to the
bending bough upon which the dark-brown mass of bees now clustered. This
seemed to me then to be a very brave act, for numbers of the bees were
darting angrily about, and one--as he afterwards showed us--stung him on
the wrist.

By this time the Old Squire had set the ladder, and climbing up, sawed
off the bough a little back of the point where the bees were clinging to
it. All this time Gram was drumming vigorously without cessation; and
Theodora having fetched a broad bit of board which she placed on the
ground under the tree, Addison slowly lowered the bough with the bees
till it rested upon the