hy, yes, if the sweets are exposed and can be tasted for nothing. Most
of us might turn robbers on the same terms. Now I can take them, and a
splendid swarm, too--finest I've seen this year."

The business of getting the glittering bunch of bees into a hive was
then proceeded with, and soon Clement had shaken the mass into a big
straw butt, his performance being completely successful. In less than
half an hour all was done, and Hicks began to remove his veil and shake
a bee or two off the rim of his hat.

John Grimbal rubbed his cheek, where a bee had stung him under the eye,
and regarded Hicks thoughtfully.

"If you happen to want work at any time, it might be within my power to
find you some here," he said, handing the bee-master five shillings.
Clement thanked his employer and declared he would not forget the offer;
he then departed, and John Grimbal returned to his farm.

CHAPTER VII

AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE

Billy Blee, who has appeared thus far as a disinterested spectator of
other people's affairs, had yet his own active and personal interests in
life. Them he pursued, at odd times, and in odd ways, with admirable
pertinacity; and as a crisis is now upon him and chance knits the
outcome of it into the main fabric of this narrative, Billy and his
actions command attention.

Allusion has already been made, and that frequently, to one Widow
Coomstock, whose attractions of income, and the ancillary circumstance
of an ample though elderly person, had won for her certain admirers more
ancient than herself. Once butt-woman, or sextoness, of Chagford Church,
the lady had dwelt alone, as Miss Mary Reed, for fifty-five years--not
because opportunity to change her state was denied her, but owing to the
fact that experience of life rendered her averse to all family
responsibilities. Mary Reed had seen her sister, the present Mrs. Hicks,
take a husband, had watched the result of that step; and this, with a
hundred parallel instances of misery following on matrimony, had
determined her against it. But when old Benjamin Coomstock, the timber
merchant and coal-dealer, became a widower, this ripe maiden, long known
to him, was approached before his wife's grave became ready for a stone.
To Chagford's amazement he so far bemeaned himself as to offer the
sextoness his hand, and she accepted it. Then, left a widow after two
years with her husband, Mary Coomstock languished a while, and changed
her methods of life somewh