One morning not long after his return from Europe he was passing, as usual, his leisure hours at the mountain farm.  While overlooking his workmen he espied a small skiff leaving an opposite shore-point of the lake and making directly for his own landing.  Mr. Cooper thought the boatman was on an errand to himself.  Presently the stranger, tin pail in hand, made his appearance and inquired of Cooper and his men whether a large swarm of bees had been seen “somewhere there-abouts.”  He had lost a fine swarm early in the morning several days before, and had since looked in vain for them; but “a near-by farmer’s wife had seen them cross the lake that way.”  No bees had been seen by the men of Chalet.  One of them said, however, “bees had been very plenty about the blossoms for a day or two.”  The farmer began to look about closely, and from the unusual number of bees coming and going among the flowers on the hill, he felt sure his honeybees were lodged somewhere near.  So, with Mr. Cooper, much interested, the search for the lost swarm began.  A young grove skirted the cliffs; above were scattered some full, tall, forest trees,—­here and there one charred and lifeless.  The farmer seemed very knowing as to bees, and boasted of having one of the largest bee-sheds in the county.  Rustic jokes at his expense were made by the workmen.  They asked him which of the great tall trees his bees had chosen; they wished to know, for they would like to see him climb it, as Mr. Cooper had said that no axe should fell his forest favorites.  The farmer nodded his head and replied that there was no climbing nor chopping for him that day—­the weather was too warm; that he intended to call his bees down—­that was his fashion.  Taking up his pail he began moving among the flowers, and soon found a honey-bee sipping from the cup of a rose-raspberry.  He said he knew at once the face of his own bee, “to say nothin’ of the critter’s talk”—­meaning its buzzing of wings.  A glass with honey from the tin pail soon captured the bee:  uneasy at first, it was soon sipping the sweets.  When quite satisfied it was set free, and its flight closely followed by the farmer’s eye.  Another bee was found on a head of golden-rod; it was served the same way but set free at an opposite point from the first’s release; this second flight was also closely noted.  Some twelve of the tiny creatures from the clover and daisies were likewise treated, until the general direction of the flight of all was sure.  This “hiving the bees” by the air-line they naturally took to their new home proved the farmer to be right, for an old, half-charred oak-stub, some forty feet high and “one limb aloft was their lighting-place, and there they were buzzing about the old blighted bough.”  The farmer then went to his boat and brought back a new hive and placed it not far from the old oak; he put honey about its tiny doorway and strewed many flowers around it.  With the sunset his bees had taken possession of their new home, and by moonlight they were rowed across the lake and placed beside the mother-swarm in the farmer’s garden.