Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/289

 pose of beating the game if it lay in the power of himself and Margaret Cameron and California to win. It was a big game that he was playing.

It is in the blood of humanity to fight for life. Anything but death. Jamie sat on the side of the bed and meditated. upon how strange it was that human beings should complain of pain, of poverty, of disappointment, of defeat of every kind, and yet the instant death, death that the little Scout said was beautiful, became imminent, humanity armed against it and fought to the last ditch, as he was fighting. He admitted that he might be mistaken, that he might be over hopeful, that Margaret Cameron’s vision might even be coloured by her hopes for him. But one thing he could not be mistaken about. His body was not so lean; his hands were surer; he could walk without his legs bowing under him; and he had quit morbid introspection. He had reached the place where several times alone in the evening he had laid aside the bee books and picked up the greatest of all books and read chapter after chapter, and he realized that never once had he done this without closing the sacred volume with the feeling that in some way he had gained something; there had been possibly only one word, some thought, something that remained with him and helped him to fashion the coming day.

Then Jamie arose, picked up a pencil and drew a circle on the calendar around the previous day, and from the circle he ran a line to the margin and lettered it “M.C.” That meant Margaret Cameron and the date was the day on which she had found him better. Another month he