first reel."

Again he was seized with a fear that one of Baird's staff had been
clumsy with subtitles. His eyes flew to his own serious face when the
silly words had gone.

The drama moved. Indeed the action of the shadows was swifter than he
supposed it would be. The dissolute son of the proprietor came on to
dust the wares and to elicit a laugh when he performed a bit of business
that had escaped Merton at the time. Against the wire screen that
covered the largest cheese on the counter he placed a placard,
"Dangerous. Do not Annoy."

Probably Baird had not known of this clowning. And there came another
subtitle that would dismay Baird when the serious young bookkeeper
enacted his scene with the proprietor's lovely daughter, for she was
made to say: "You love above your station. Ours is 125th Street; you get
off at 59th."

He was beginning to feel confused. A sense of loss, of panic, smote him.
His own part was the intensely serious thing he had played, but in some
subtle way even that was being made funny. He could not rush to embrace
his old mother without exciting laughter.

The robbery of the safe was effected by the dissolute son, the father
broke in upon the love scene, discovered the loss of his money, and
accused an innocent man. Merton felt that he here acted superbly. His
long look at the girl for whom he was making the supreme sacrifice
brought tears to his own eyes, but still the witless audience
snickered. Unobserved by the others, the old mother now told her son
the whereabouts of the stolen money, and he saw himself secure the paper
sack of bills from the ice-box. He detected the half-guilty look of
which he had spoken to Baird. Then he read his own incredible speech--"I
better take this cool million. It might get that poor lad into trouble!"
Again the piece had been hurt by a wrong subtitle. But perhaps
the audience laughed because it was accustomed to laugh at Baird's
productions. Perhaps it had not realized that he was now attempting one
of the worth-while things. This reasoning was refuted as he watched what
occurred after he had made his escape.

His flight was discovered, policemen entered, a rapid search behind
counters ensued. In the course of this the wire screen over the biggest
cheese was knocked off the counter. The cheese leaped to the floor, and
the searchers, including the policemen, fled in panic through the front
door. The Montague girl, the last to escape, was seen to announce,