d the stage was a contrivance
striking as to coloring as well as variety of pieces. It added no little
to the sport of the evening by the squeaks it gave out as the heavy man
walked across, and by the falling down of the calico wings and by the
persistent refusal of the curtain to go down at the proper moment on the
tableau. At the back of the room the benches rose one above the other
until the one at the rear was near the grimy ceiling. These benches were
occupied by the toughs of the town, who treated each other to peanuts
and slapped one another over the head with their soft, shapeless hats,
and laughed inordinately when some fellow's hat was thrown out of his
reach into the crowd.

The play was Wilkie Collins' "New Magdalen," and the part of Mercy was
taken by a large and magnificently proportioned woman, a blonde, and in
Johnny's eyes she seemed something divine, with her grace and majesty of
motion. He took a personal pride in her at once and wanted her to come
out triumphant in the end, regardless of any conventional morality.

True, his admiration for the dark little woman's tragic utterance at
times drew him away from his breathless study of the queenly Mercy, but
such moments were few. Within a half hour he was deeply in love with the
heroine and wondered how she could possibly endure the fat man who
played the part of Horace, and who pitched into the practicable supper
of cold ham, biscuit and currant wine with a gusto that suggested
gluttony as the reason for his growing burden of flesh.

And so the play went on. The wonderful old lady in the cap and
spectacles, the mysterious dark little woman who popped in at short
intervals to say "Beware!" in a very deep contralto voice, the tender
and repentant Mercy, all were new and wonderful, beautiful things to the
boys, and though they stood up the whole evening through, it passed so
swiftly that the curtain's fall drew from them long sighs of regret.
From that time on they were to dream of that wonderful play and that
beautiful, repentant woman. So securely was she enthroned in their
regard that no rude and senseless jest could ever unseat her. Of
course, the men, as they went out, laughed and joked in the manner of
such men, and swore in their disappointment because it was a serious
drama in place of the comedy and the farce which they had expected.

"It's a regular sell," Bill said. "I wanted to hear old Plunket stid of
all that stuff about nothin'. That was