perfume and he watched a few late bees journeying back and forth to the delicate beds of colour—just at the line where the pinkish lavender of the verbena and the gold of the beach primroses opened to the sun; he would go that far the coming day. And the following he would march right straight ahead until he attained the crest of the dauntless rock.
To reach it he must pass a long stretch of breaking waves, each of which seemed to say to him: “I dare you! I dare you to come on!” Jamie sat there and contemplated his feet and thought of their swollen and aching condition, and a great longing assailed him to thrust them into the cold salt water of the ocean. Once he half started to rise, and then the thought came to him that if he became chilled, if he took a heavy cold, if he developed a cough—— Jamie laid his hand on his left breast and sat still. That would mean the end very speedily, and if it were a possible thing he intended to fight until the Bee Master came home and relieved him of the trust that he had assumed when he had agreed to remain with the bees. But the longing, the desire to step into the cold salt water had been awakened.
When he heard his call to supper, he started slowly, painfully, up the winding stairway. Every few steps he paused and turned to look at the lazy waves creeping up the sand and rolling back again, and he said to himself that as sure as there was light in the sky, one of these days he would go down there and he would put at least his feet in the ocean; he would climb that mountain of rock and
