fourth one in Space, only to catch the wrong game;
for he had counted upon studying, if but for a few rapt moments, the
vision of a land west of the sun, east of the moon--a novel territory,
perhaps a vast playground for souls emancipated from the gyves of
existence. But this!--he shuddered at the catastrophe: a very Pompeian
calamity depriving him at a stroke of his wife, his orchestra--all, all
had been engulfed. Forgetting his newly won crown, forgetting the
tremendous import of his discovery to mankind, Pobloff began howling,
"Luga, Luga, _Akh_! Wife of my bosom, my tender little violet of a
harpist!"

His voice floated into the street, and it seemed to him to be echoed by
a shrill chorus. Soprano voices reached him and he heard his name
mentioned in a foreboding way.

"Where is the pig? Pobloff! Pobloff! Why don't you show your ugly face?
Be a man! Where are our husbands?" He recognized a voice--it was the
wife of the horn-player who thus insulted him. She was a tall, ugly
woman and, as gossip averred, she beat her man if he did not return home
sober with all his wages. Pobloff rushed out upon the balcony; it was
not many feet above the level of the street. In the rays of a sinking
sun he was received with jeers, groans, and imprecations. Balakian women
have warm blood in their veins and are not given to measuring their
words over-nicely. He stared about him in sheer wonderment. A mob of
women gazed up at him and its one expression was unconcealed wrath.
Children and men hung about the circle of vengeful amazons laughing,
shouting and urging violence. Pobloff, in his dressing-gown, was a fair
target. "Where are our husbands? Brute, beast, in what prison have you
locked them up? Where is your good woman, Luga? Have you hidden her, you
old tyrant?" "No!" shrieked the horn-player's wife, "he's jealous of
her." "And she's run away with your man," snapped the wife of the crazy
oboist. The two women struggled to get at each other, their fingers
curved for hairplucking, but others interfered--it would not be right to
promote a street fight, when the cause of the trouble was almost in
their clutches. A disappointed yell arose. Pobloff had sneaked away,
overjoyed at the chance, and, as his front door succumbed to angry
feminine pressure, he was safely hidden in the opera house which he
reached by running along back alleys in the twilight. There he learned
from one of the stage hands that the real secret was his and his alo