me not to use Westminster Abbey for a
really big scene like that, don't you think?"

"I should say so!" agreed Merton warmly. "They build plenty of sets as
big as that. Keep it in!"

"Well, I'll take your advice. And I shan't give up trying with my other
ones. And I'm writing to another set of people--see here." She took
from her handbag a clipped advertisement which she read to Merton in the
fading light, holding it close to her keen little eyes. "Listen! 'Five
thousand photoplay ideas needed. Working girl paid ten thousand dollars
for ideas she had thought worthless. Yours may be worth more. Experience
unnecessary. Information free. Producers' League 562, Piqua, Ohio.'
Doesn't that sound encouraging? And it isn't as if I didn't have some
experience. I've been writing scenarios for two years now."

"We both got to be patient," he pointed out. "We can't succeed all at
once, just remember that."

"Oh, I'm patient, and I'm determined; and I know you are, too, Merton.
But the way my things keep coming back--well, I guess we'd both get
discouraged if it wasn't for our sense of humour."

"I bet we would," agreed Merton. "And good-night!"

He went on to the Gashwiler Emporium and let himself into the dark
store. At the moment he was bewailing that the next installment of The
Hazards of Hortense would be shown on a Saturday night, for on those
nights the store kept open until nine and he could see it but once. On a
Tuesday night he would have watched it twice, in spite of the so-called
comedy unjustly sharing the bill with it.

Lighting a match, he made his way through the silent store, through the
stock room that had so lately been the foul lair of Snake le Vasquez,
and into his own personal domain, a square partitioned off from the
stockroom in which were his cot, the table at which he studied the art
of screen acting, and his other little belongings. He often called this
his den. He lighted a lamp on the table and drew the chair up to it.

On the boards of the partition in front of him were pasted many
presentments of his favourite screen actress, Beulah Baxter, as she
underwent the nerve-racking Hazards of Hortense. The intrepid girl
was seen leaping from the seat of her high-powered car to the cab of a
passing locomotive, her chagrined pursuers in the distant background.
She sprang from a high cliff into the chill waters of a storm-tossed
sea. Bound to the back of a spirited horse, she was raced down the steep
sl