"The prayer was for the out-trail, not the in-trail, my mother."

"Nay, I do not understand thee."

"A swarm of bees came singing through the room last night, my mother. It
was dark and I could not see, but there was a sweet smell, and I heard
the voices."

"My child, thou art tired with watching, and thy mind is full of fancies.
Thou must sleep."

"I am tired of watching. Through the singing of the bees as they passed
over my bed, I heard my father's voice. I could not hear the words, they
seemed so far away, like the voices of the bees; and I did not cry out,
for the tears were in my throat. After a moment the room was so still
that it made my heart ache."

"Oh, my Fanchon, my child, thou dost break my heart! Dost thou not know
the holy words?"

"'And their souls do pass like singing bees, where no man may follow.
These are they whom God gathereth out of the whirlwind and the desert,
and bringeth home in a goodly swarm.'"

Night drew close to the earth, and as suddenly as a sluice-gate drops and
holds back a flood the storm ceased. Along the crest of the hills there
slowly grew a line of light, and then the serene moon came up and on,
persistent to give the earth love where it had had punishment. Divers
flocks of clouds, camp-followers of the storm, could not abash her. But
once she drew shrinking back behind a slow troop of them; for down at the