Mr. Duncan sighed.  “It’s all very sordid and annoying.  Now this evening, for instance, when we might have enjoyed ourselves with those books, I’ve’ got to go to the House, just because some backwoods farmers want to talk about woodchucks.  I suppose it’s foolish,” said Mr. Duncan; “but Bass has tricked us so often that I’ve got into the habit of being watchful.  I should have been here twenty minutes ago.”

By this time they had come to the entrance of the State House, and Wetherell followed Mr. Duncan in, to have a look at the woodchuck session himself.  Several members hurried by and up the stairs, some of them in their Sunday black; and the lobby above seemed, even to the storekeeper’s unpractised eye, a trifle active for a woodchuck session.  Mr. Duncan muttered something, and quickened his gait a little on the steps that led to the gallery.  This place was almost empty.  They went down to the rail, and the railroad president cast his eye over the House.

“Good God!” he said sharply, “there’s almost a quorum here.”  He ran his eye over the members.  “There is a quorum here.”

Mr. Duncan stood drumming nervously with his fingers on the rail, scanning the heads below.  The members were scattered far and wide through the seats, like an army in open order, listening in silence to the droning voice of the clerk.  Moths burned in the gas flames, and June bugs hummed in at the high windows and tilted against the walls.  Then Mr. Duncan’s finger nails whitened as his thin hands clutched the rail, and a sense of a pending event was upon Wetherell.  Slowly he realized that he was listening to the Speaker’s deep voice.

“’The Committee on Corporations, to whom was referred House Bill Number 109, entitled, ’An Act to extend the Truro Railroad to Harwich, having considered the same, report the same with the following resolution:  Resolved, that the bill ought to pass.  Chauncey Weed, for the Committee.’”

The Truro Franchise!  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.