"The
big cheese is loose--it's eating all the little ones!"

A band of intrepid firemen, protected by masks and armed with axes,
rushed in. A terrific struggle ensued. The delicatessen shop was
wrecked. And through it all the old mother continued to mop the floor.
Merton Gill, who had first grown hot, was now cold. Icy drops were on
his chilled brow. How had Hearts on Fire gone wrong?

Then they were in the great open spaces of the Come All Ye dance hall.
There was the young actor in his Buck Benson costume, protecting his
mother from the brutality of a Mexican, getting his man later by firing
directly into a mirror--Baird had said it would come right in the
exposure, but it hadn't. And the witless cackled.

He saw his struggle with the detective. With a real thrill he saw
himself bear his opponent to the ground, then hurl him high and far into
the air, to be impaled upon the antlers of an elk's head suspended back
of the bar. He saw himself lightly dust his sleeves after this feat, and
turn aside with the words, "That's one Lodge he can join."

Then followed a scene he had not been allowed to witness. There swung
Marcel, the detective, played too emphatically by the cross-eyed man. An
antler point suspended him by the seat of his trousers. He hung limply
a moment, then took from his pocket a saw with which he reached up to
contrive his release. He sawed through the antler and fell. He tried to
stand erect, but appeared to find this impossible. A subtitle announced:
"He had put a permanent wave in Marcel."

This base fooling was continuously blown upon by gales of stupid
laughter. But not yet did Merton Gill know the worst. The merriment
persisted through his most affecting bit, the farewell to his old pal
outside--how could they have laughed at a simple bit of pathos like
that? But the watching detective was seen to weep bitterly.

"Look a' him doin' Buck Benson," urged the hoarse neighbour gleefully.
"You got to hand it to that kid--say, who is he, anyway?"

Followed the thrilling leap from a second-story window to the back of
the waiting pal. The leap began thrillingly, but not only was it shown
that the escaping man had donned a coat and a false mustache in the
course of his fall, but at its end he was revealed slowly, very slowly,
clambering into the saddle!

They had used here, he saw, one of those slow cameras that seem to
suspend all action interminably, a cruel device in this instance. And
for his act