At this moment, as fate would have it, the roving hornet chanced to buzz around the speaker, and with a distinct object and deliberate aim plumped itself against his nose, amid a roar of laughter from the gentlemen present, and the complete discomfiture of the victim, who lost his balance and toppled over sideways upon the floor. He was now glad to follow the ladies in-doors, and enjoy the fun at his expense. "Well, it might have been expected," he remarked, "after the way you have all been screaming and banging at him. You have got him mad at last, and the innocent spectator has had to suffer in consequence." I chanced to be sitting within a few feet of the surprised bachelor, and had observed the incident. Indeed, the hornet had once or twice struck me forcibly upon my coat sleeve and shoulder. Concluding that the incident suggested an opportunity for a little pedagogic enlightenment, illustrated by an object-lesson too good to be entirely lost, I sauntered into the hotel parlor, and did what I could to relieve the hornet from the unjust aspersion on his character. "Did he sting you?" I asked. "No, he didn't," replied the victim, who, like the ladies whom he had ridiculed, was more surprised than harmed; "but he tried to, and I concluded not to give him a second chance. He struck me so hard that if his sting _had_ happened to hit me, it would have penetrated my skull." "And can you imagine a hornet failing in his intention when he gets such a good square shot as that?" I asked, further. "Well, no," he replied; "but perhaps his venom had been expended on the ladies; by their screams I judge most of them must have been stung a half-dozen times apiece." "If you will step out on the porch a few moments," I proposed, "I am assured you will soon be disposed to offer your apology to the industrious and innocent insect which you have so libelled." A cautious group soon assembled at the doorway of the piazza, and at my suggestion closely watched the antics of the hornet, which was still apparently as mad as ever, in the absence of human targets, seemingly "working off his mad" by butting his head against the clapboards along the side of the building. After a moment or two of this exercise, with a quick curvet, the insect betook himself to the roof of the piazza, where he disappeared among the bordering vines. A little cautious search soon revealed his hiding-place, however. He was hanging, head downward, by one of his hind legs, twirling some dark object in his front feet; and it needed only a little closer examination to disclose this object to be a fly, which was gradually being reduced to a pulp by the sharp jaws of its captor--a morsel, doubtless, soon to find its way to the cell of a baby hornet in some paper nest close by.