The country people have various ways of accounting for the effect of this clangour on a fire-shovel in causing a swarm of bees to settle. Some think they like it, and so stop to hear it; others, that the young queen-bee, scared by the noise, settles on the first object she sees. Certain it is that the effect is general, and very marked. Others think this clangour must be made to claim your swarm, for if it settles on another man’s property without such loud claim, and close following, you cannot assert your right to them. Be that as it may, our friends of Woodburn Grange saw their swarm hanging before them. There was a quick running for a sheet and an empty hive. The inside of the hive was rubbed with a mixture of beer and crushed black-currant leaves, or balm, and Sam Davis quietly approached them, put down two bricks on the sheet, cut off carefully the bough on which the swarm hung; deposited it on the sheet between the two bricks; and then set the hive over it. The skill with which this was done, without irritating the bees, showed that Davis was an experienced hand at this operation. The bees seemed to settle themselves pretty tranquilly in their new home, but Mrs. Woodburn observed that a number of them continued to fly about the end of the bough whence the part covered with the swarm had been cut off. “Yes,” said Davis, “they will come and try to find it, and worship the place where the queen alighted several days yet.” “Ay,” said Betty, who had generally some religious fancy to attach to every curious occurrence, “that’s just the way with many in their religion. They go and worship blindly for a few days; but it’s only for a few, and then it’s all over with them.”