were here and there clanking on the pavement.

The theatre was a rude wooden structure that stood near the banks of
the river, on a vacant plot of ground that bordered the city on the
east and skirted the fields. It had a gallery that sloped upwards from
the pit, and the more conspicuous seats in it were draped in crimson
cloth. The stage, which went out as a square chamber from one side of
the circular auditorium, was lighted by lamps that hung above the
heads of the actors.

Before the performance began every seat was filled. The men hailed
their friends from opposite sides of the house, and laughed and
chaffed, and sang snatches of Royalist and other ballads. The women,
who for the most part wore veils or masks, whispered together, flirted
their fans, and returned without reserve the salutations that were
offered them.

Ralph Ray, who was there, stood at the back of the pit, and close at
his left was the sinister little man who had earlier in the evening
been described as his shadow. Their bearing towards each other was the
same as had been observed at the Cross: the one constantly
interrogating in a low voice; the other answering with a steadfast
glance or not at all.

When the curtain rose, a little butterfly creature, in the
blue-and-scarlet costume of a man,--all frills and fluffs and lace and
linen,--came forward, with many trips and skips and grimaces, and
pronounced a prologue, which consisted of a panegyric on the King and
his government in their relations to the stage.

It was not very pointed, conclusive, or emphatic, but it was rewarded
with applause, which rose to a general outburst of delighted approval
when the rigor of the "late usurpers" was gibbeted in the following
fashion:--

Affrighted with the shadow of their rage,
They broke the mirror of the times, the Stage;
The Stage against them still maintained the war,
When they debauched the Pulpit and the Bar.

"Pretty times, forsooth, of which one of that breed could be the
mirror," whispered the little man at Ralph's elbow.

The play forthwith proceeded, and proved to be the attempt of a
gentleman of fashion to compromise the honor of a lady of the Court
whom he had mistaken for a courtesan. The audience laughed at every
indelicate artifice of the libertine, and screamed when the demure
maiden let fall certain remarks which bore a double significance.
Finally, when the lady declared her interest in a cage of birds, and
t