Le Bourdon now intimated a wish to change his ground.  He had noted two of the bees, and the only question that remained to be decided, as it respected them, was whether they belonged to the precise points toward which they had flown, or to points beyond them.  The reader will easily understand that this is the nature of the fact determined by taking an angle, the point of intersection between any two of the lines of flight being necessarily the spot where the hive is to be found.  So far from explaining this to those around him, however, Boden kept it a secret in his own breast.  Margery knew the whole process, for to her he had often gone over it in description, finding a pleasure in instructing one so apt, and whose tender, liquid blue eyes seemed to reflect every movement of his own soul and feelings.  Margery he could have taught forever, or fancied for the moment he could; which is as near the truth as men under the influence of love often get.  But, as for the Indians, so far from letting them into any of his secrets, his strong desire was now to throw dust into their eyes, in all possible ways, and to make their well-established character for superstition subservient to his own projects.

Boden was far from being a scholar, even for one in his class in life.  Down to this hour, the neglect of the means of public instruction is somewhat of a just ground of reproach against the venerable and respectable commonwealth of which he was properly a member, though her people have escaped a knowledge of a great deal of small philosophy and low intriguing, which it is fair to presume that evil spirits thrust in among the leaves of a more legitimate information, when the book of knowledge is opened for the instruction of those who, by circumstances, are prevented from doing more than bestowing a few hurried glances at its contents.  Still, Ben had read everything about bees on which he could lay his hands.  He had studied their habits personally, and he had pondered over the various accounts of their communities—­a sort of limited monarchy in which the prince is deposed occasionally, or when matters go very wrong—­some written by really very observant and intelligent persons, and others again not a little fanciful.  Among other books that had thus fallen in le Bourdon’s way, was one which somewhat minutely described the uses that were made of bees by the ancient soothsayers in their divinations.  Our hero had no notion of reviving those rites, or of attempting to imitate the particular practices of which he had read and heard; but the recollection of them occurred most opportunely to strengthen and encourage the design, so suddenly entertained, of making his present operation aid in opening the way to the one great thing of the hour—­an escape into Lake Michigan.

“A bee knows a great deal,” said le Bourdon, to his nearest companions, while the whole party was moving some distance to take up new ground.  “A bee often knows more than a man.”