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. "I'll bet there is," he added, "a runaway swarm that's gone in at the gable end outside, where the clapboards are off." He climbed up on the high pulpit and with the handle of the broom rapped on the ceiling. We immediately heard a deep humming sound overhead, and so many bees flew down through the cracks that Addison descended in haste. We retreated toward the door. "What are we going to do when Senator Hamlin and all the people come?" I asked. "I don't know!" Addison muttered, perplexed. "That old loft is roaring full of bees. We've got to do something with them, or there won't be any speaking here to-day." We thought of stopping up the cracks, but there were too many of them to make that practicable. To dislodge the swarm from the loft, too, would be equally difficult, for the more we disturbed the bees the more furious they would become. At last we thought of the old Squire's bee smoker with which he had sometimes subdued angry swarms that were bent on stinging.