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The Keeper of the Bees

behooves a man when he treads on antique rugs and touches antique furniture. You will find everything exactly as you left it when you come home again.”

The Bee Master smiled. “I divined that would be the case when I hailed you from the road,” he said. “You appealed to me, even in that hour of agony, as a man of fine perceptions and right instincts. I knew that I would be safe in leaving even my most cherished possessions with you. I had not any sense that you were a stranger. You seemed to me rather an instrument that had been sent to serve my dire necessity. And the little Scout? My little partner?”

“Your little partner comes to the garden, but I doubt if the garden is much of a garden without you. There are two things that I have to tell you.”

Jamie dipped in his pocket and produced the price of the hot dog and the strawberry pop and laid the coins in the outstretched hands of the Bee Master.

“My instructions,” he said, “were to have the bun fried, the hot dogs split and cooked crisp. The onions were to be browned. The exact amount of mustard was specified. I was to superintend the construction of that hot dog personally and with care. I’ll go now and see that it is made according to specifications, if you think Doctor Grayson would not cane me.”

The Bee Master smiled. He closed his fingers over the money, the identical pieces that his little partner had counted out for him.

“That money was carefully selected,” said Jamie, “from