The Keeper of the Bees
THERE came a stretch of days during which the awakening of each morning was a small miracle all by itself to Jamie. To awake rested, refreshed, to awake with hope in his heart, to look down the irregular stretch of the garden and on the ceaseless lapping of the sea and to say to himself, “To-day I will transplant the lilies. I will trim the poinsettias. I will plant some tomatoes.” To be able to tell himself that he would do something constructive with the knowledge in his heart that he would have the strength to do it and the uplift in his spirit that would give him joy in the doing; because from that period on, each morning awakening was in a way a new miracle. It seemed to him that he could feel the purity, the cleanliness of the blood that was flowing through his veins. He knew that the heart in his breast was calming down, was throbbing with a regularity and a surety that he had not known in a long time; it had ceased to flutter, even at a stiff climb. He knew that strength was gradually forging into his limbs and his hands, that his brain was clearing. He was no longer a pusillanimous creature creeping around wondering about how long he could live. He was an upright man with a hopeful outlook, with a definite pur-
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