alf, could not help feeling loyal
to Senator Morrill. Hot debates we had! Halstead alone was indifferent.
At last Ellen declared herself on my side and thus made a tie at table.
I never knew whom the old Squire favored; he never told us and was
always reluctant to speak of the matter.

It was a very close contest, and in the legislature was finally decided
by a plurality of one in favor of Mr. Hamlin. Seventy-five votes were
cast for him, seventy-four for Mr. Morrill, and there was one blank
vote, over which a dispute later arose.

Earlier in the season, when the legislators who were to decide the
matter at Augusta were being elected, both candidates made personal
efforts to win popular support. Thus it happened that Uncle Hannibal on
one of his visits to his native town that year, promised to give us a
little talk. Since there was no public hall in the neighborhood, the
gathering was to be held at the capacious old Methodist chapel.

There had been no regular preaching there of late, and the house had
fallen into lamentable disrepair. The roof was getting leaky; the wind
had blown off several of the clapboards; and a large patch of the
plaster, directly over the pulpit, had fallen from the ceiling.

Fall was now drawing on, with colder weather, and so, on the day of
Uncle Hannibal's talk, the old Squire sent Addison and me over to the
chapel to kindle a fire in the big box stove and also to sweep out the
place.

We drove over in the morning--the meeting was to begin at two
o'clock--and set to work at once. While we were sweeping up the debris
we noticed insects flying round overhead. For a while, however, we gave
them little heed; Addison merely remarked that there was probably a
hornets' nest up in the loft, but that hornets would not molest any one
if they were left alone. But after we had kindled a fire in the stove
and the long funnel had begun to heat the upper part of the room, they
began to fly in still greater numbers. Soon one of them darted down at
us, and Addison pulled off his hat to drive it away.

"I say!" he cried, as his eyes followed the insect where it alighted on
the ceiling. "That's no hornet! That's a honeybee--and an Egyptian,
too!"

We quickly made sure that they were indeed Egyptian bees. They were
coming down through the cracks between the laths at the place where the
plaster had fallen from the ceiling.

"Do you suppose there's a swarm of bees up there in the loft?" Addison
exclaimed