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I had misgivings, but, not liking to fail old Hughy at a pinch, I let him rig me up for the feat and at last, taking the plug, started to walk up the slightly inclined tree trunk to the woodpecker's hole, which was close to the point where the basswood rested against the hemlock. I found it was not hard to walk up the sloping trunk if I did not look down into the gully.
"I was thinking of course you know, Julia, that since poor little Hughy's death, I am the next in for the title?" "Poor Hughy! I'm sure you are too generous to rejoice at that." "Indeed I am. When two fellows offered me a dinner at the club on the score of my chances, I wouldn't have it. But there's the fact; isn't it?" "There is no doubt of that, I believe."
Getting the tin pails, the kettle and the brimstone together with an axe and a compass at the old man's cabin, we went out across the fields and the pastures north of the Wilbur farm to the borders of the woods through which old Hughy wanted to follow the bees. A line of stakes that old Hughy had set up across the open land marked the direction in which the bees had flown to the forest.
Old Hughy had little enough to say; but he tried to smooth matters over by offering her a piece of honey-comb. "No, sir," said she. "I want none of your honey!" All that the old Squire had said when he saw me up in the hemlock was, "Be calm, my son; you will get down safe."
Desolation In the meantime there was grief down at the great house of Clavering; and grief, we must suppose also, at the house in Berkeley Square, as soon as the news from his country home had reached Sir Hugh Clavering. Little Hughy, his heir, was dead. Early one morning, Mrs.
Terry said Hughy Bellmer's aunt at the last of her frightful luncheon concerts, where you eat two hours in a jungle of palms and orchids, and groan to music two hours more in indigestion. 'A lovely girl, my dear Mrs. Van Dam, she said; 'a privilege to know her. Pity that so many of our best people fight shy of a protegee of the newspapers. That from Mrs. Terry, with her hair and her hats "
He had lost track of us in the woods for a time, but had finally heard the basswood fall and then had found us. Even at that distance across the gully I saw Willis's face break into a grin when he saw me perched in the hemlock. For the present, however, I was too much worried to be proud and implored his aid. He looked round a while, exchanged a few words with old Hughy and then hailed me.
It may have been the wine I overheard two young cads making free of my house to discuss my affairs. "Mrs. Terry really dragged Hughy out of town?" one of them asked, assuming a familiarity with Bellmer that I suspect he cannot claim. "Guess so; he's playing horse with old Bellmer's money; always wrong side of the betting." "Needs Keeley cure. Good natured cuss; wonder if the Winship'll get him."
In spite of the slant, old Hughy thought that by proper cutting the tree could be made to fall on our side of the gully instead of across it. He threw off his old coat and set to work, but soon stopped short and began rubbing his shoulder and groaning, "Oh, my rheumatiz, my rheumatiz! O-o-oh, how it pains me!"
After taking our bearings from them by compass we entered the woods and went on from one large tree to another. Now and again we came to an old tree that looked as if it were hollow near the top. On every such tree old Hughy knocked loudly with the axe, crying, "Hark, boy! Hark! D'ye hear 'em? D'ye see any come out up thar?"
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