Joseph Morris but the bees.

“A bee tree, Dave!” he cried. “See, we are in luck for once!”

“A bee tree, true enough!” echoed the youth. “It ought to be pretty well filled with honey by this time, too. Of course you’ll mark it, Uncle Joe.”

“To be sure, although I shouldn’t forget it very easily--being so close to this opening and so near to the trail. But we’ll mark it, so that nobody else can claim it between now and the time we come for the honey.”

Approaching the tree with caution Joseph Morris noticed the bees go into an opening just above the lower branches. His experienced eye told him that there was here a hive of considerable size with a good many pounds of honey in it. He marked the tree with care, so that it now became his property by right of discovery.

“We’ll gather in that honey just as soon as we return from Annapolis,” he said. “It will please mother I’m sure, for we are short on sweets for this winter.”

And then they proceeded once more on their way.

CHAPTER IV

DEER SHOOTING BY MOONLIGHT

Night found Dave and his uncle at the cabin of a settler named Risley, an Englishman who had come to the neighborhood a year before. Visitors were far from frequent in those days and the newcomers were made heartily welcome by the farmer and his wife. The former insisted on helping them care for their horses, while the latter bustled about to prepare a substantial meal for their benefit.

“It does one good to set eyes on another face,” remarked Uriah Risley, when they were gathered around his rough-hewn table, partaking of a stew in an iron pot set in their midst. “It is so different here from life in Sussex, where we came from. The good wife thought she should die of loneliness when we first settled. But now she is somewhat used to it. Is that not so, Catherine?”

“Truly it is, Uriah,” answered the spouse. “In dear Lenfield Glen we had neighbors by the score, and the smoke of a hundred chimneys went up of a sunrise; here we have nothing but trees and water and blue sky until I am weary of gazing upon it all.”

“It won’t be so for many years,” put in Joseph Morris. “The settlers are coming in more and more every year.”

“I’ve heard some talk of a company being started to take up the lands in 

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