ws
that no broom ever harried, a family of spiders, some mice, a
daddy-long-legs, two crickets, and a bluebottle fly, besides the
hornet, found snug quarters in their season, and a welcome.

The hornet stayed about, contentedly enough, for a week or more,
crawling over the window panes till they were thoroughly explored, and
occasionally taking a look through the scattered papers on the table.
Once he sauntered up to the end of the penholder I was using, and
stayed there, balancing himself, spreading his wings, and looking
interested while the greater part of a letter was finished. Then he
crawled down over my fingers till he wet his feet in the ink;
whereupon he buzzed off in high dudgeon to dry them in the sun.

At first he was sociable enough, and peaceable as one could wish; but
one night, when it was chilly, he stowed himself away to sleep under
the pillow. When I laid my head upon it, he objected to the extra
weight, and drove me ignominiously from my own bed. Another time he
crawled into a handkerchief. When I picked it up to use it, after the
light was out, he stung me on the nose, not understanding the
situation. In whacking him off I broke one of his legs, and made his
wings all awry. After that he would have nothing more to do with me,
but kept to his own window as long as the fine weather lasted.

When the November storms came, he went up to a big crack in the window
casing, whence he had emerged in the spring, and crept in, and went
to sleep. It was pleasant there, and at noontime, on days when the sun
shone, it streamed brightly into his doorway, waking him out of his
winter sleep. As late as December he would come out occasionally at
midday to walk about and spread his wings in the sun. Then a
snow-storm came, and he disappeared for two weeks.

[Illustration]

One day, when a student was sick, a tumbler of medicine had been
carelessly left on the broad window sill. It contained a few lumps of
sugar, over which a mixture of whiskey and glycerine had been poured.
The sugar melted gradually in the sun, and a strong odor of alcohol
rose from the sticky stuff. That and the sunshine must have roused my
hornet guest, for when I came back to the room, there he lay by the
tumbler, dead drunk.

He was stretched out on his side, one wing doubled under him, a
forward leg curled over his head, a sleepy, boozy, perfectly ludicrous
expression on his pointed face. I poked him a bit with my finger, to
see how the