Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/132



HE new day was one of fog and of stillness and then a cold wind that Jamie did not care to face. Just at evening when he looked from the back veranda and down across the stretch before him, he realized that the thing he had wanted to see was going to hap pen. There were heat flashes across the horizon. Forked tongues of light were beginning to flicker up and there was an ominous stillness, and away up to the north and west he could see big black clouds beginning to mass and to gather.

Jamie straightened up. “A storm!” he said to himself. “The storm! By all that’s good and peaceful, I’ll see it from the throne if it’s the last thing that I ever do!”

He looked over the garden, putting away several things that high wind might damage; he carefully closed the windows and locked the doors, and then he went into the closet on the back porch and ransacked the Bee Master’s belongings for suitable clothing. He laid out the bee coat and the old overcoat, and then he found a heavy raincoat that was precisely what he wanted.

He put the bee coat on, and carrying the overcoat and the raincoat and wearing the old broad-brimmed hat, he locked the back door behind him and slowly made his way