We had a kind of reverence for some of the things about us. The oak tree we much regarded, and next to it the beech, not alone because they gave acorns and nuts to our herds of swine and to ourselves in times of strait, but because we held that they possessed a sort of sanctity. Curious it was, too, that one insect should be so regarded. This was the bee. Great was the value to us of the honey the bees furnished, our only sweet, and of its use in the making of our strong mead. Hence came the marking of the bee trees wherein was stored their honey. Heavily was he punished who cut down and plundered a marked bee tree, but if it were not marked by the first finder there was no punishment. So it was that about the bee grew up a sort of faith. Bees, it was held, had a language of their own and could understand what was said to them, and it was not counted wise to kill one. To be a hunter of the trees in which the bees concealed their stores was counted worthy of even a warrior, and I was proud that at this I had been gifted with no mean ability. Well must he know the wilds and be ready to fare patiently and far who would discover where the creatures hid their treasure, and shrewd must be his knowledge and close his nature to the wild things. It may be that I was thus close, for I was somewhat a man apart and had my dreaming ways. I had no wife. There had been one among the maidens, deep-eyed and fair and strong and red of hair as I, whom I had loved much and who would rest in the place in my arms, but our wood gods had it otherwise. There came a time of fever, and she died, and after she had been buried with my golden bracelet pledge on her round white arm, I cared no more for women. My bed was in my brother’s house, and his children cherished me, but I loved the woods and the chase and the bee-hunting and was much away, with all my fancies, at some of which the warriors laughed, saying that I was sometimes not unlike a dreaming girl, though it had been I who brought home upon my spear the head of the grim Suevi champion after one of our hardest battles. All was not unbroken forest in our region; there were blue mountains far to the south, and here and there were little plains, and in the forest itself were sometimes clear spaces, flower-covered, where the bees sought honey for their storing. I have clearly in mind a day when I sought one of these smiling distant places.