“The doorkeepers has the keys in their pockets!” Mr. Bixby had to shout, for once.

Even then the Speaker did not flinch.  By a seeming miracle he got a semblance of order, recognized his man, and his great voice rang through the hall and drowned all other sounds.

“And on this question a roll-call is ordered.  The doorkeepers will close the doors!”

Then, as in reaction, the gallery trembled with a roar of laughter.  But Mr. Sutton did not smile.  The clerk scratched off the names with lightning rapidity, scarce waiting for the answers.  Every man’s color was known, and it was against the rules to be present and fail to vote.  The noise in the corridors grew louder, some one dealt a smashing kick on a panel, and Wetherell ventured to ask Mr. Bixby if he thought the doors would hold.

“They can break in all they’ve a mind to now,” he chuckled; “the Truro Franchise is safe.”

“What do you mean?” Wetherell demanded excitedly.

“If a member hain’t present when a question is put, he can’t git into a roll-call,” said Bijah.

The fact that the day was lost was evidently brought home to those below, for the strife subsided gradually, and finally ceased altogether.  The whispers in the gallery died down, the spectators relayed a little.  Lovejoy alone remained tense, though he had seated himself on a bench, and the hot anger in which he had come was now cooled into a vindictiveness that set the hard lines of his face even harder.  He still clutched the ribbon.  The last part of that famous roll-call was conducted so quietly that a stranger entering the House would have suspected nothing unusual.  It was finished in absolute silence.

“One hundred and twelve gentlemen have voted in the affirmative, forty-eight in the negative, and the bill passes.  The House will attend to the title of the bill.”

“An act to extend the Truro Railroad to Harwich,” said the clerk, glibly.

“Such will be the title of the bill unless otherwise ordered by the House,” said Mr. Speaker Sutton.  “The doorkeepers will open the doors.”

Somebody moved to adjourn, the motion was carried, and thus ended what has gone down to history as the Woodchuck Session.  Pandemonium reigned.  One hundred and forty belated members fought their way in at the four entrances, and mingled with them were lobbyists of all sorts and conditions, residents and visitors to the capital, men and women to whom the drama of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was as nothing to that of the Truro Franchise Bill.  It was a sight to look down upon.  Fierce wrangles began in a score of places, isolated personal remarks rose above the din, but your New Englander rarely comes to blows; in other spots men with broad smiles seized others by the hands and shook them violently, while Mr. Speaker Sutton seemed in danger of suffocation by his friends.  His enemies, for the moment, could get nowhere near him.  On this scene Mr. Bijah Bixby gazed with pardonable pleasure.