Winter lay over the valley at this time. Snow massed upon the roads making them well-nigh impassable. Wise folk ventured not far afield, but, returning from enforced expeditions with speed, made themselves snug between four walls. Round the same walls the wind blew shrilly. Within one of the cottages an old man sat crouched over a turf fire. A wizened old thing he was, his face crossed and recrossed with wrinkles, till it was like a withered brown apple. He stretched gnarled old hands to the blaze, hands hardened with many years of holding a spade. Folk said his heart was as hard as his hands. It may be they spoke truth. It is certain that if he had a heart, hard or soft, he kept it very well hidden. None speaking a good word of him, he spoke a good word of none. Give and it shall be given you, was his motto; which being interpreted meant, An’ you give to me, I will e’en give to you, an interpretation other than is usual to it. The motto was not likely to bring him any vast satisfaction, though doubtless he cheated himself into imagining that it did. At all events it was the one he had chosen, and that to his mind stood for something. You will perceive, too, that through it he saw himself against mankind, not mankind against him; that also stood for something. In his way he was a bit of a thinker. None knew this for certain, as he kept his thoughts, if he had any, to himself; but he was suspected of them. This was not in his favour. Thinking is for your student, your philosopher, your priest, possibly for your lord of the manor. It comes not into the life of a villain. Work, food, and sleep; sleep, food, and work are in the natural order of things; mayhap a prayer or two to Our Lady and the saints, and at the last, death, which, being more pitiful than life, is not ill welcome. He had no kith nor kin; no one and nothing for which he cared, save his bees. Of these he had a goodly store, ten hives set in the garden behind his hovel,—it was little else. In the summer they made music around him while he tilled the soil. He found their droning very pleasant to his ears. By virtue of this goodly possession he was called Simon of the Bees. The title was dear to him, though no man dreamed it. Here was the sole thing mankind had ever bestowed on him which afforded him pleasure; yet, since the bestowal was of careless custom rather than of charity aforethought, it was deserving of no reward. Such was his reasoning. It was a matter of occasional speculation in the village as to whom Simon would will his bees on his death, having no kin. It remained, however, speculation; and was like to do so. On this winter night Simon, warming his hands over the fire, and muttering now and again to himself, was roused from his muttering by a blow on the door. He got slowly to his feet, grumbling the while, and drew back the wooden bolt which made it fast. Without, in the darkness, he saw a cloaked figure standing in the wind-driven snow.