p her position in an elm tree just outside the churchyard,
where a large cluster of bees quickly depended from a bough. Being at
a great height the cottager could not take them, and, anxious not to
lose the swarm, he resorted to the ancient expedient of rattling
fire-tongs and shovel together in order to attract them by the
clatter. The discordant banging of the fire-irons resounded in the
church, the doors being open to admit the summer air; and the noise
became so uproarious that the clerk presently, at a sign from the
rector, went out to stop it, for the congregation were in a grin. He
did stop it, the cottager desisting with much reluctance; but, as if
to revenge the bee-master's wrongs, in the course of the day the
swarm, quitting the elm, entered the church and occupied a post in the
roof.

After a while it was found that the swarm had finally settled there,
and were proceeding to build combs and lay in a store of honey. The
bees, indeed, became such a terror to nervous people, buzzing without
ceremony over their heads as they stood up to sing, and caused such a
commotion and buffeting with Prayer-books and fans and handkerchiefs,
that ultimately the congregation were compelled to abandon their pews.
All efforts to dislodge the bees proving for the time ineffectual, the
rector had a temporary reading-desk erected in the porch, and there
held the service, the congregation sitting on chairs and forms in the
yard, and some on the stone tombs, and even on the sward under the
shade of the yew tree.

In the warm dry hay-making weather this open-air worship was very
pleasant, the flowers in the grass and the roses in the little plots
about the tombs giving colour and sweet odours, while the swallows
glided gracefully overhead and sometimes a blackbird whistled. The
bees, moreover, interfered with the baptisms, and even caused several
marriages to be postponed. Inside the porch was a recess where the
women left their pattens in winter, instead of clattering iron-shod
down the aisle.

Okebourne village was built in an irregular way on both sides of a
steep coombe, just at the verge of the hills, and about a mile from
the Chace; indeed, the outlying cottages bordered the park wall. The
most melancholy object in the place was the ruins of a windmill; the
sails and arms had long disappeared, but the wooden walls, black and
rotting, remained. The windmill had its genius, its human
representative--a mere wreck, like itself,