The Sheriff's Sweetheart" was offered,
and for a time, in shifting pictures, horse-thieves in leather "chaps,"
and heroes in open-necked shirts, and dashing cow-girls in divided
skirts, played out a thrilling drama of the West, while behind them
danced and quivered a background labelled Arizona, but suggesting New
Jersey. When the dashing and intrepid sheriff had, after many trials,
won his lady love, the ballad singer again obliged throatily, and then
from his coop in the little gallery the lantern man made an
announcement, in large, flickering letters, of a film depicting William
Shakespeare's play, "Macbeth."

Thereupon scene succeeded scene, unfolding the tragic tale. The
ill-fated Duncan was slain; the Witches of Endor capered fearsomely
about their fearsome cauldron of snaky, froggy horrors; and then--taking
some liberties with the theme as set down by the original author--the
operator presented a picture wherein Macbeth, tortured by sleeplessness
and hag-ridden with remorse, saw, in imagination, the dripping blood
upon his hands and vainly sought to scour it off.

Right here, too, came another innovation which might or might not have
pleased the Bard of Avon. For as Macbeth wrestled with his fears, the
phantom of the murdered Duncan, a cloaked, shadowy shape, crossed slowly
by him from right to left, traversing the breadth of the screen, while
the orchestra rendered shivery music in appropriate accompaniment.

Midway of the lighted space the ghost raised its averted head and
looked out full, not at the quivering Macbeth, but, with steady eyes and
set, impassive face, into the body of the darkened little theatre. In an
instant the sheeted form was gone--gone so quickly that perhaps no
keen-eyed juvenile in the audience detected the artifice by which,
through a skilful scissoring and grafting and doctoring of the original
film, the face of the actor who played the dead and walking Duncan had
been replaced by the photographed face, printed so often in the
newspapers, of murdered Old Man Steinway!

There was a man near the centre of the house who got instantly upon his
legs and stumbling, indeed almost running in his haste, made up the
centre aisle for the door; and in the daylight which strengthened as he
neared the open, it might be seen that he wore the look of one stunned
by a sudden blighting shock. And at once Green and Cassidy were noisily
up too, and following close behind him, their nerves a-tingle.

Al