ate his meals, and went to sleep, without the slightest fear of being
stung. He had lived with the bees so long, they had become so
accustomed to him, and his skin was so tough and hard, that the bees
no more thought of stinging him than they would of stinging a tree or
a stone. A swarm of bees had made their hive in a pocket of his old
leathern doublet; and when he put on this coat to take one of his
long walks in the forest in search of wild bees' nests, he was very
glad to have this hive with him, for, if he did not find any wild
honey, he would put his hand in his pocket and take out a piece of a
comb for a luncheon. The bees in his pocket worked very
industriously, and he was always certain of having something to eat
with him wherever he went. He lived principally upon honey; and when
he needed bread or meat, he carried some fine combs to a village not
far away and bartered them for other food. He was ugly, untidy,
shrivelled, and brown. He was poor, and the bees seemed to be his
only friends. But, for all that, he was happy and contented; he had
all the honey he wanted, and his bees, whom he considered the best
company in the world, were as friendly and sociable as they could be,
and seemed to increase in number every day.

One day, there stopped at the hut of the Bee-man a Junior Sorcerer.
This young person, who was a student of magic, necromancy, and the
kindred arts, was much interested in the Bee-man, whom he had
frequently noticed in his wanderings, and he considered him an
admirable subject for study. He had got a great deal of useful
practice by endeavoring to find out, by the various rules and laws of
sorcery, exactly why the old Bee-man did not happen to be something
that he was not, and why he was what he happened to be. He had
studied a long time at this matter, and had found out something.