Again and again Carl hammered at the door. At last some one raised a window in the second story, and a voice called down rather crossly through the darkness.  
“It’s Harman!” Carl cried. “I’ve come to pay your money.”
 
“Too late. I’m abed,” answered Mr. Farr. “Come in to-morrow.”
 
“Not much!” retorted Carl. “It’s due before midnight to-day, and you said you wouldn’t give me an hour’s extra time. I’m not taking any chances. I’m afraid you’ll have to get up.”
 
Mr. Farr chuckled¹ and left the window. They heard him stirring about, and presently saw the light of a lamp. In a few minutes he opened the front door and conducted them into the sitting-room². His hair was tousled, and he was in his stocking-feet and looked older and more wizened³ than ever, but something seemed to be amusing him greatly.
 
Carl produced the telegraph check. Mr. Farr scrutinized⁴ it carefully, chuckled once more, wrote a receipt, and gave them a check of his own in change.
 
“I’m obleeged for the money,” he said, smiling broadly, “but you needn’t have been in such an all-fired hurry with it.”
 
“It was your fault,” Carl explained. “You said, you know—”
 
“Yes, I know, and I expect the joke’s on me at having to get up in the middle of the night like this. But the law gives you three days of grace, you know. And besides, you can’t foreclose a mortgage without giving thirty days’ notice. You had a whole month to pay in. Guess you ain’t studied mortgage law. That’s why I wouldn’t take your ten dollars a day for an extension, and I was having my quiet laugh to see you so flustered⁶ and worrited, when you wasn’t in no danger at all.”
 
“But—but I thought—” Carl stammered⁷.
 
“That I’d grab the bees away from you to-morrow? Foreclosing a mortgage is a slower business than that. Now you think I’m a pretty hard customer, don’t you?”
 
Carl blushed.
 
“Well, I’ll tell you now that I never foreclosed but one mortgage in my life, and that was on a farm where I hadn’t got no interest for three years, and the fellow was boasting that Dave Farr’d never get a cent out of him. Foreclosed on him, I did; but I’d have no more shut down on young people like you than I’d have sold myself out.”
 
“I’m sorry, Mr. Farr! We didn’t understand—either the business, or you!” cried Alice, and she held out her hand impulsively⁸.
 
“That’s all right, young lady. You didn’t know nothing about business, of course, and I did, that’s all. I oughter have told you how you stood instead of laughing, and it serves me right to be got up out of bed at this time of night. And now my sleep’s broke up, I’ll have a chaw, and you can tell me how your investment panned out.”
 
Mr. Farr produced a black plug of tobacco from inside the clock, bit off a piece and disposed himself to listen. Carl briefly⁹ outlined their fortunes, and told of the trouble they had had with Larue. Mr. Farr laughed heartily¹⁰ at the expedient¹¹ of the robber bees.
 
“I see you young people are as sharp as they make ’em!” he said. “Just think of sending them bees to bring back their own honey! But I know Baptiste Larue—known him for years. He ain’t such a bad fellow, lazy and steals a little, and if you play him a bad trick he’ll get back at you sure as fate. That’s the Indian in him; and if you do him a good turn he’ll never forget it, and that’s the Indian too, I guess. Pity you’ve got at loggerheads with him. Better try to straighten it out. I’ll have a talk with him when I see him, and maybe I can help to straighten things out.”
 
They went back to the hotel to sleep that night with the feeling that an enemy had suddenly been transformed into a friend. Mr. Farr promised to help them in every way he could; at the same time he was careful to assure them that business was business, and he would still hold them to the strict letter of the mortgage. But this time Alice laughed, and he did not seem offended.
 
They expected Bob to come up on the train next morning, but he failed to arrive. It seemed unwise to remain away from the bee-yard any longer, so they embarked¹² immediately for the voyage up the river.
 
It was a fine, sunny morning. The rains had broken the drought, and the air was full of the moist heat that makes good honey weather, but the raspberry bloom was long since over.
 
The harvest was past; the bee-season was practically done, and they had saved themselves, if only by the skin of their teeth. Now that the money was paid, they both felt the reaction from the strain and fatigue¹³ of the last weeks. The thought of their finances depressed¹⁴ them. They had not two hundred dollars in the world.
 
“If we’d only had some more of this weather a month ago!” said Carl.
 
“Yes, it would have meant hundreds of dollars. But there’s no hope of anything more from the bees this year,” Alice replied.
 
“Worse than nothing! For we’ll probably have to feed them sugar to winter on, perhaps a hundred dollars’ worth. It’ll leave us nearly broke, I’m afraid. Alice, we’ll have to go to the city this winter and do as I proposed.”
 
They rowed up the river for a long way in silence. Then Alice, trying hard to speak hopefully, said, “Anyhow, we’ve got a lot of valuable property, and next year—”
 
“Hark!” Carl interrupted. “What’s that?”
 
He had stopped rowing, and there was dead silence in the wilderness¹⁵. A jay called noisily from a treetop, and then again silence fell. After a minute, as Alice listened, she seemed to hear a deep, murmurous¹⁷ hum from the woods along the shore.
 
“It sounds like bees,” she said, doubtfully.
 
“It is bees!” affirmed Carl after listening a little longer. “It must be our bees. But what are they after? How far are we from home?”
 
Alice thought they were about two miles. They had passed Indian Slough¹⁸ some time before.
 
“I do hope they’re not after Larue again,” said Carl. “But most likely they’ve found a wild bee-tree and are robbing it.”
 
But after a few minutes Carl grew so curious that he went ashore¹⁹ and tried to follow the flight of the bees, which could now be seen passing overhead. Presently Alice heard him calling her, in great excitement.
 
She hastened after him. He was standing²⁰ at the edge of a great burned slash²¹ that extended for fully⁵ two miles. It was studded with charred²², spike²³-branched trees and second-growth hemlock²⁴, tangled²⁵ with berry bushes, and choked with quantities of a weed that grew three feet or more high and bore spikes²⁶ of brilliant, crimson²⁷-pink flowers.
 
On the nearest spike of blossoms Alice saw three or four bees, and from the whole tract²⁸ resounded²⁹ the deep, busy hum that they had heard from the river.
 
“D’you know what that is?” shouted Carl, dancing with exultation³⁰. “Willow-herb! Fireweed! What do you think of that?”
 
Alice also recognized it. Willow-herb—also known as “fireweed,” because it always springs up in the track of forest fires—is one of the best honey-yielding plants in America. It flowers in late summer, and lasts until frost kills it, secreting³¹ nectar heavily whenever the weather is at all favorable. A single colony of bees has been known to gather the almost incredible amount of four hundred pounds of honey from this plant alone. It does not grow in the settled portions of the country, and as the Harmans had never seen it in profusion³², they had never thought of including it among their prospective³³ resources.
 
“O Carl!” cried Alice. “We may get a big crop after all! Let’s hurry home and see what the bees are doing.”
 
Burning with impatience³⁴, they hurried up the river as fast as the heavy old tub could be driven against the stream. Without waiting to tie the boat, they ran to the apiary³⁵. The air was full of a heavy roar. Bees were coming in by thousands and dropping on the hive-entrances. It was like the best days of the raspberry flow. Carl seized his sister by the waist and joyously³⁶ hugged her.
 
“It seems too good to be true! If it only lasts! Won’t Bob be astonished when he gets here?”
 
Bob did not arrive till late the next afternoon. He had walked all the way from Morton to save the expense of a conveyance³⁷ and he was very tired. He had also probably been meditating³⁸ on their financial state, for he seemed depressed; but Carl and Alice said nothing at once about the sudden change in their prospects³⁹.
 
The bees had ceased flying for the day, but from all the hives, where the new honey was being ripened⁴⁰, came a heavy roar. After supper Bob walked out towards the hives and noticed it. He stopped to listen, and scrutinized the entrances closely.
 
“Been feeding them?” he asked at last, with a perplexed⁴² look.
 
“No,” answered Carl, gravely.
 
“Surely they can’t have been gathering⁴³ anything, can they?”
 
“Gathering anything!” Carl burst out, unable to hold the secret any longer. “I guess those bees have gathered about a thousand pounds of honey in the last two days. The fireweed is in bloom, Bob. We never thought of that, did we? There are miles of it! It yields honey by the ton, and if we just get regular rains we’ll have our eighteen-hundred-dollar crop yet.”
 
Bob could hardly believe the news till he had looked into some of the supers himself, where great patches of clear, white honey already showed. Then his enthusiasm knew no bounds.
 
“I was just beginning to think we’d been fools to go into this apiary game,” he exclaimed. “But this puts a different color on the thing. If we only get the right weather, now!”
 
For the next three days the weather was indeed perfect, and the bees did marvelously well. A visit to the new apiary by the lake showed that the colonies there were also storing heavily and needed supers. They had never expected this yard to yield any surplus honey this season, but............