them?”

“Why I’ve heard the story,” said the planter, much amused. “I know for a fact that the old nigger did have right smart of bee-gums once. What became of ’em after he died I can’t say. I don’t see why some of ’em shouldn’t be there yet. There’s nothing to kill bees in this country, excepting thieves. Why, I knew an old gum that stood in a fence-corner for ten or twelve years, and nobody ever went near it, and the bees are alive and well now.”

“That’s the way you keep bees, too, isn’t it, Uncle Louis?” said Alice, slyly.

“We’ve got more important things to do with corn and cotton and hogs down here in the South, young lady,” said Mr. Marshall. “We don’t need to fool with insects.”

There was a shout of laughter at this retort, which reduced Alice to silence, but the conversation drifted irresistibly back to the bees. Joe heard talk of great apiaries, of colonies by the hundred, of tons of honey, of car-loads, indeed, mentioned like ordinary matters, and it filled him with greater and greater amazement. Even Uncle Louis was impressed, though he kept up his air of good-natured ridicule of the whole pursuit.

“But we certainly can’t go after Dick’s bees unless you go with us, Joe,” said Bob. “We don’t understand this country; we have to have a guide. Can’t you manage it?”

Joe shook his head doubtfully.

“Wish I could. But I’m afraid Burnam couldn’t spare me for another vacation just now. But what you-all must do,” he added, “is to come up with me, and see the turpentine camp, and the old Marshall place—the old family seat, you know. Nobody’s there now; the old house is rotting down. It won’t last much longer.”

The young Harmans accepted this proposition with enthusiasm. They all spent three active days on the plantation. They rode, practised with firearms, fished in the bayou and the river, hunted quail and rabbits, and once went out before dawn to stalk a wild-turkey roost—not to shoot, for the game was out of season, but to give the Northerners a look at the big birds. The cousins became great friends, and at the end of Joe’s holiday they all took the boat upstream together for Marshall’s Landing, as the place was still called.

From the landing they walked a mile through the woods to see the old house where their parents had been born, paintless now, crumbling and dilapidated. The glass was gone from the windows; there were 

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