It was a strange procession coming up the red-tiled path of the bee garden.  The bee-master led the way in his Sunday clothes, followed by a gorgeous footman, powdered and cockaded, who carried an armful of wraps and cushions.  Behind him walked two more, supporting between them a kind of carrying-chair, in which sat a florid old gentleman in a plaid shawl; and behind these again strode a silk-hatted, black-frocked man carefully regulating the progress of the .  Through the rain of autumn leaves, on the brisk October morning, I could see, afar off, a carriage waiting by the lane-side; a big old-fashioned family vehicle, with cockaded servants, a pair of champing greys, and a glitter of gold and on the panel, where the sunbeams struck on an elaborate coat-of-arms.  
The whole procession made for the extracting-house, and all work stopped at its approach.  The great centrifugal machine ceased its humming.  The doors of the packing-room were closed, shutting as the of saw and hammer.  Over the stone floor in front of the furnace—where a big caldron of metheglin was simmering—a carpet was hastily unrolled, and a comfortable couch brought out and set close to the cheery blaze.
 
And now the strangest part of the commenced.  The old gentleman was brought in, disrobed, and transferred to the couch by the fireside.  He seemed in great about something.  He kept his gold eyeglasses turned on the bee-master, watching him with a sort of terrified wonder, as the old bee-man produced a mysterious box, with a lid of perforated , and laid it on the table close by.  From my corner the whole scene was strongly reminiscent of the ogre’s kitchen in the fairy-tale; and the sounds from the packing-room might have been the voice of the ogre himself, complaining at the lateness of his dinner.
 
Now, at a word from the black-coated man, the bee-master opened his box.  A loud angry buzzing uprose, and about a dozen bees escaped into the air, and flew straight for the window-glass.  The bee-master followed them, took one carefully by the wings, and brought it over to the old gentleman.  His visibly redoubled.  The doctor seized him in an iron, professional grip.
 
“Just here, I think.  Close under the shoulder-blade.  Now, your lordship . . . ”
 
Viciously the infuriated bee struck home.  For eight or ten seconds she worked her wicked will on the patient.  Then, turning round and round, she at last drew out her sting, and back to the window.
 
But the bee-master was ready with another of his living stilettos.  Half a dozen times the operation was repeated on various parts of the suffering patient’s body.  Then the old gentleman—who, by this time, had passed from whimpering through the various stages of growing indignation to sheer undisguised profanity—was restored to his apparel.  The procession was re-formed, and the bee-master conducted it to the waiting carriage, with the same ceremony as before.
 
As we stood looking after the retreating vehicle, the old bee-man entered into explanations.
 
“That,” said he, “is Lord H—, and he has been a to these ten years back.  I could have cured him long ago if he had only come to me before, as I have done many a poor soul in these parts; but he, and those like him, are the last to hear of the physician in the hive.  He will begin to get better now, as you will see.  He is to be brought here every fortnight; but in a month or two he will not need the chair.  And before the winter is out he will walk again as well as the best of us.”
 
We went slowly back through the bee-farm.  The working-song of the bees seemed as loud as ever in the keen October sunshine.  But the steady deep note of summer was gone; and the bee-voice of autumn—shrill, anxious, almost vindictive—rang out on every side.
 
“Of course,” continued the bee-master, “there is nothing new in this treatment of rheumatism by bee-stings.  It is as old as the hills.  Every bee-keeper for the last two thousand years has known of it.  But it is as much as a preventive as a cure that the acid in a bee’s sting is valuable.  The rarest thing in the world is to find a bee-keeper suffering from rheumatism.  And if every one kept bees, and got stung occasionally, the doctors would soon have one the less to trouble about.”
 
“But,” he went on, “there is something much pleasanter and more v............