Old Hughy hobbled down into the gully with his kettle and tried to smother the bees by putting the brimstone close to the cleft in the tree trunk and setting it afire; but, although the fumes rose so pungently that I was obliged to hold my nose to keep from being smothered, the effect on the bees was not noticeable. Old Hughy then tried throwing water on them. The water was more efficacious than the brimstone, and before Willis returned the old man was able to cut out a section of the tree trunk and fill his two pails with the dripping combs--all of which I viewed not any too happily from aloft. Willis appeared at last with the coil of rope. With him came Addison and Halstead, much out of breath, and a few minutes later the old Squire himself arrived. They said that grandmother Ruth also was on the way. Willis, it seems, had spread alarming reports of my predicament. Willis and Addison tied numerous knots in the rope so that it should not slip through my hands and knotted a flat stone into the end of it. Then they took turns in throwing it up toward me until at length I caught it and tied it firmly to the limb on which I was sitting. Then I ventured to trust my weight to it and amid much laughter but without any difficulty lowered myself to the ground. In fact, I was not exactly the hero. The hero, I think, was Willis. But for his appearance I hardly know how I should have fared. Old Hughy, I remember, was rather loath to share the honey with us; but we all took enough to satisfy us. The old man, indeed, was hardly the hero of the occasion either--a fact that he became aware of when on our way home we met grandmother Ruth, anxious and red in the face from her long walk. She expressed herself to him with great frankness. "Didn't you promise to be careful where you sent that boy!" she exclaimed. "Hugh Glinds, you are a palavering old humbug!" Old Hughy had little enough to say; but he tried to smooth matters over by offering her a piece of honey-comb. "No, sir," said she. "I want none of your honey!" All that the old Squire had said when he saw me up in the hemlock was, "Be calm, my son; you will get down safe." And when they threw the rope up to me he added, "Now, first tie a square knot and then take good hold of the rope with both hands." CHAPTER XXV WHEN THE LION ROARED At daybreak on September 26, if I remember aright, we started to drive from the old farm to Portland with eighteen live hogs. There was a crisp frost that morning, so white that till the sun rose you might have thought there had been a slight fall of snow in the night.