The lights danced, and even a sudden weakness came
upon the storekeeper. Jethro's trick! The Duncan and Lovejoy
representatives in the theatre, the adherents of the bill here! Wetherell
saw Mr. Duncan beside him, a tense figure leaning on the rail, calling to
some one below. A man darted up the centre, another up the side aisle.
Then Mr. Duncan flashed at William Wetherell from his blue eye such a
look of anger as the storekeeper never forgot, and he, too, was gone.
Tingling and perspiring, Wetherell leaned out over the railing as the
Speaker rapped calmly for order. Hysteric laughter, mingled with hoarse
cries, ran over the House, but the Honorable Heth Sutton did not even
smile.

A dozen members were on their feet shouting to the chair. One was
recognized, and that man Wetherell perceived with amazement to be Mr.
Jameson of Wantage, adherent of Jethro's--he who had moved to adjourn for
"Uncle Tom's Cabin"! A score of members crowded into the aisles, but the
Speaker's voice again rose above the tumult.

"The doorkeepers will close the doors! Mr. Jameson of Wantage moves that
the report of the Committee be accepted, and on this motion a roll-call
is ordered."

The doorkeepers, who must have been inspired, had already slammed the
doors in the faces of those seeking wildly to escape. The clerk already
had the little, short-legged desk before him and was calling the roll
with incredible rapidity. Bewildered and excited as Wetherell was, and
knowing as little of parliamentary law as the gentleman who had proposed
the woodchuck session, he began to form some sort of a notion of Jethro's
generalship, and he saw that the innocent rural members who belonged to
Duncan and Lovejoy's faction had tried to get away before the roll-call,
destroy the quorum, and so adjourn the House. These, needless to say,
were not parliamentarians, either. They had lacked a leader, they were
stunned by the suddenness of the onslaught, and had not moved quickly
enough. Like trapped animals, they wandered blindly about for a few
moments, and then sank down anywhere. Each answered the roll-call
sullenly, out of necessity, for every one of them was a marked man. Then
Wetherell remembered the two members who had escaped, and Mr. Duncan, and
fell to calculating how long it would take these to reach Fosters Opera
House, break into the middle of an act, and get out enough partisans to
come back and kill the bill. Mr. Wetherell began to wish he could witn