Sacharissa rounded up her rearguard, which dropped headlong off the frame, and joined the Princess's detachment thrusting toward the Gate. Now panic was in full blast, and each sound bee found herself embraced by at least three Oddities. The first instinct of a frightened bee is to break into the stores and gorge herself with honey; but there were no stores left, so the Oddities fought the sound bees. “You must feed us, or we shall die!” they cried, holding and clutching and slipping, while the silent scared earwigs and little spiders twisted between their legs. “Think of the Hive, traitors! The Holy Hive!” “You should have thought before!” cried the sound bees. “Stay and see the dawn of your New Day.” They reached the Gate at last over the soft bodies of many to whom they had ministered. “On! Out! Up!” roared Melissa in the Princess's ear. “For the Hive's sake! To the Old Oak!” The Princess left the alighting-board, circled once, flung herself at the lowest branch of the Old Oak, and her little loyal swarm--you could have covered it with a pint mug--followed, hooked, and hung. “Hold close!” Melissa gasped. “The old legends have come true! Look!” The Hive was half hidden by smoke, and Figures moved through the smoke. They heard a frame crack stickily, saw it heaved high and twirled round between enormous hands--a blotched, bulged, and perished horror of grey wax, corrupt brood, and small drone-cells, all covered with crawling Oddities, strange to the sun. “Why, this isn't a hive! This is a museum of curiosities,” said the Voice behind the Veil. It was only the Bee Master talking to his son. “Can you blame 'em, father?” said a second voice. “It's rotten with Wax-moth. See here!” Another frame came up. A finger poked through it, and it broke away in rustling flakes of ashy rottenness. “Number Four Frame! That was your mother's pet comb once,” whispered Melissa to the Princess. “Many's the good egg I've watched her lay there.” “Aren't you confusing post hoc with propter hoc?” said the Bee Master. “Wax-moth only succeed when weak bees let them in.” A third frame crackled and rose into the light. “All this is full of laying workers' brood. That never happens till the stock's weakened. Phew!” He beat it on his knee like a tambourine, and it also crumbled to pieces. The little swarm shivered as they watched the dwarf drone-grubs squirm feebly on the grass. Many sound bees had nursed on that frame, well knowing their work was useless; but the actual sight of even useless work destroyed disheartens a good worker. “No, they have some recuperative power left,” said the second voice. “Here's a Queen cell!” “But it's tucked away among---- What on earth has come to the little wretches? They seem to have lost the instinct of cell-building.” The father held up the frame where the bees had experimented in circular cell-work. It looked like the pitted head of a decaying toadstool.