The deep, vibrant, horror-laden note increases hour by hour. As each executioner overtakes her victim, she grips him by the base of the wing; and, helped by others all alike infuriate at the work, she half drags, half pushes him through the throng, until she has him in the light of day, and tumbles with him to the ground; he for ever fighting and struggling, and uttering that frenzied note of fear; she savagely gnawing at the wing until it is disabled, and he can never more return to the hive. Many of the strongest drones escape from their persecutors for the time being, and fly away unhurt. But it is only for a few hours. Hunger is sure to bring them back to the hive, when the waiting guards fall upon them, and maim or drive them off once more. It is specially to be marked that the bees never sting the drones at this great annual feast of carnage. There is that much method in the madness which has seized upon them; for, in the rough-and-tumble of such a conflict, stings would be plucked out by the roots, and thus valuable lives would go down with the worthless. The sole object seems to be to rid the hives as effectively as possible of the presence of the drones; and the disablement of one wing appears to be all that is necessary, and therefore all for which the deft assassin strives. With some bee-races the massacre of the drones is carried through in an incredibly short space of time; with others the agony of the thing is drawn out for days together. The wretched sires of the hive are caught between two evils, each as fatal as the other. If they fly off to the fields, starvation and the night-chills will swiftly bring about their end. If they return to the hive, a still speedier death awaits them. Night and day, at this time, the guard-bees are doubled and re-doubled at the city-gates; and there is little chance of the wiliest drone outwitting them. But he usually takes the home-hazard; and sooner or later comes blundering in, receiving with open arms, as it were, his share of the knife, as Huddlestone faced the Carbonari. All this is the common way with the bee-republic, when the season goes as it should; and the hive is in possession of a mother-bee—young, strong, and of proved fecundity. But there are times when the drones—for all their great expense and drain on the wealth of the colony—are suffered to live on until the late autumn, or even to remain unmolested throughout the winter and following spring. If the bee-master sees drones about a hive, when other colonies have long ago made a good riddance of them, he well knows what ails the stock. Its queen is old and failing; and these astute amazons have given reprieve to their male-kind until a new mother-bee can be raised and properly mated. It is a case of mercy to the drones tempered with so much justice to themselves that the original virtue is largely discounted.