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 which she might require. Three or four idle males, gentlemen of leisure, much smaller and slenderer than the queen, strolled about among the busy throng, occasionally caressing a complaisant worker or a slave, and generally receiving a taste of honey in return.

Formica went straight up to the crowd surrounding the queen mother and stood there for perhaps a half minute, waving her antennae and paying her respects. It would seem, however, that some sort of a council was being held at the moment, presumably under the guidance of the queen, and that decisions of importance to the tribe were being reached. For all at once there was a great stir and shifting, and a number of the ants, hurriedly extricating themselves from the press, formed themselves in an orderly file and hastened from the chamber. Among the foremost of these, already recovered and prepared for adventure in spite of her strenuous morning, was Formica.

As it started from the state chamber the detachment was a small one, of not more than eighty or a hundred; but as it went it was swelled by fresh adherents flocking out from every gallery, for word had gone all through the citadel that a slave-raiding expedition was afoot. Filing forth upon the surface of the dome, the detach-