Page:Weird Tales v15n01 1930-01.djvu/123

wouldn't think they'd hold that much stuff, would ya?"

Stanislas Bodinski arrived at the last hive, with two remaining milk pans, and proceeded to lift the top away from the hive. They saw him look in. Then he stopped and looked close. Then he stepped back, raised his arms in an amazing gesture of wonderment, sank to his knees beside the hive, and made the sign of the cross on his breast many times.

Wonderingly, they approached, Tony's wife murmuring:

"What's bitin' him? Is he gone loony, huh?" Then: "Hey, Tony, they mus' be somethin' awful strange in that-there hive, huh—for Stan to ac' that way!"

There was indeed something strange in the hive, although there was very little honey in it. They did not dare touch it, and, after Stanislas had somewhat recovered himself, and put back the top with hands shaking, the three of them, just as they stood, Tony's wife not even taking off her apron, started for the rectory, to get Father Gregoreff.

The priest came, rather grumblingly, Stanislas following half a block behind the other three. He had run into the sacristy to get the priest's cope and a stole, and something which he had to hold onto, in his pocket, to keep it quiet! He hoped Father Gregoreff would not look behind him and see what he was carrying. He was a bit of a mystic, this Stanislas; otherwise he would not, perhaps, have continued to be an acolyte after he was nineteen. He, too, had come from near Kovno, like Kazmir Strod. Stanislas had listened to strange tales in his earlier boyhood, back there in the Old Country.

He came in through Tony Dvorcznik's gate well behind the rest, furtively. They were all standing, looking at the hive, when he came around the corner of the house. He walked around them, knelt before his priest, seized and kissed his hand. He handed the amazed Father Gregoreff his stole, and the priest put it on mechanically, murmuring, "What's this? what's all this?" Stanislas rose, hastily invested his pastor with the white cope, and stepped over to the hive. He knelt, and turning to the others, motioned them, authoritatively, to kneel also. They did so, all three, the priest's cope trailing on the ground, a few feet behind Stanislas.

Stanislas, making the sign of the cross, reached his arms into the hive. Carefully, the sweat running down his face, he lifted out a shining yellow, new-wax structure, intact, with infinite care. He turned, still on his knees, and placed what he had lifted in the priest's hands. It was a little church, made of wax, made by the bees whose dead bodies, suffocated by sulfur fumes, now littered the dead hive.

Then Stanislas took the sacring bell from his left-hand pocket, and, his head on the ground, rang it to indicate to all who might be within earshot that they should prostrate themselves before the Sanctissimum.