Page:Amusing stories of animals.pdf/17

 and having discovered a small crevice in the roof, she immediately forced her way into the interior. There she found "room and verge enough," and thinking the place suitable in every respect, she warned her winged subjects to advance, and pitch their waxen tents betwixt the roof and the cielingceiling [sic]. This summons was at once obeyed by the loyalist insects, and for many a week, month, and year, they and their successors, down, perhaps, to the ninth or tenth generation, maintained undisturbed possession of what may be called the garet of the church of Hoddam. In spring and summer, the cheerful hum of their ceaseless industry was heard mingling with the voice of psalms, and many remarks were made on their sagacity, in reviving, as it were, the days of eudalism, when vanquished clansmen found the church a sanctuary in every sense of the word, nd in periods of danger assembled their kindred within its pale, as the only means of escaping from the cruel and fiery death that awaited them. Even the children respected what they termed the "kirk bees," and so far from killing or chasing them from flowers, not unfrequently helped them to a meal, by gathering the wilding ose at a distance, and leaving it in situations here it was sure to be punctured to good purose before its fragrance had died away. Thus erished, and protected, the bees literally lived clover, and were total strangers to that pover which is said to be characteristic of church ice. Their wealth increased every year, and though the minister might have justly claimed