“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 witness the scene there, too, but something held him here, shaking with excitement, listening to each name that the clerk called.

Would the people at the theatre get back in time?

Despite William Wetherell’s principles, whatever these may have been, he was so carried away that he found himself with his watch in his hand, counting off the minutes as the roll-call went on.  Fosters Opera House was some six squares distant, and by a liberal estimate Mr. Duncan and his advance guard ought to get back within twenty minutes of the time he left.  Wetherell was not aware that people were coming into the gallery behind him; he was not aware that one sat at his elbow until a familiar voice spoke, directly into his ear.

“Er—­Will—­held Duncan pretty tight—­didn’t you?  He’s a hard one to fool, too.  Never suspected a mite, did he?  Look out for your watch!”

Mr. Bixby seized it or it would have fallen.  If his life had depended on it, William Wetherell could not have spoken a word to Mr. Bixby then.

“You done well, Will, sure enough,” that gentleman continued to whisper.  “And Alvy’s gal done well, too—­you understand.  I guess she’s the only one that ever snarled up Al Lovejoy so that he didn’t know where he was at.  But it took a fine, delicate touch for her job and yours, Will.  Godfrey, this is the quickest roll-call I ever seed!  They’ve got halfway through Truro County.  That fellow can talk faster than a side-show, ticket-seller at a circus.”

The clerk was, indeed, performing prodigies of pronunciation.  When he reached Wells County, the last, Mr. Bixby so far lost his habitual sang froid as to hammer on the rail with his fist.