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368
The Keeper of the Bees

teach her that there is a better way than the way she chose. Have mercy, Oh Lord!”

Stumblingly, Jamie arose and went to the bedroom. He sat down on the side of the bed and put his hands over his face and cried until his lean frame shook, cried his heart out. After a long time, when the storm had passed, he wiped his eyes and discovered, as he reached the back porch, that he was hungry. So he went across to Margaret Cameron’s kitchen and burgled his way through a back window. Into the basket she used he packed everything he could find that would spoil in her absence and carried it home with him. Then, for the first time, he really went about the business of trying to cook food for himself. He knew where he could take the street car and find a small café not so far away, but somehow he was in no mood te meet men. He was in no mood to face women. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to think. He wondered where what remained of Alice Louise was going to be laid. He wondered if a small stone was going to be erected above her and if his name would be carved on that stone. He wondered if it would read “The beloved wife cf James Lewis MacFarlane.”

Then he wondered what the name of the baby’s mother might have been and it occurred to him that he had a way of finding out. The first time he was in the city he could go to the Marriage License Bureau and ask to see the records on some excuse that he could think up by that time. He could find out what name the Storm Girl had written in to fit with Alice Louise. Jamie never