ne fell across Pobloff's nose and awoke him. He sat
up. It took fully five minutes for self-orientation, and the fixed idea
bored vainly at his forehead. He groaned as he realized the hopelessness
of the situation. Sometime the truth would have to be told. The
king--what would His Majesty not say! Pobloff's life was in danger; he
had no doubt on that head. At the best, if he escaped the infuriated
women he would be cast into prison, or else wander an exile, all his
hopes of glory gone. The prospect was chilling. If he had only kept the
score--the score, where was it? In a moment he was on his feet,
rummaging the stage for the missing music. It had vanished. Pobloff
jumped from the platform to the spot where he had fallen; his sharp eye
saw something white beneath the overturned music-stand. It did not take
long to reveal the missing _partitur_. All was there, not a leaf
missing, though some rumpled and soiled. When Pobloff had tumbled into
the aisle, miraculously escaping a dislocated neck, the music and the
rack had kept him company. Curiously he fingered the manuscript. Yes,
there was the fatal spot! He gazed at the strange combination of
instruments on the page in his own nervous handwriting. How came the
cataclysm? Vainly the composer scanned the various clefs, vainly he
strove to endow with significance the sparse bunches of notes scattered
over the white ruled paper. He saw the violins in the highest, most
screeching position; saw them disappear like a battalion of tiny
balloons in a cloud. No, it was not by the violins the dread enigma was
solved. But there were few other instruments on the leaf except the
harp. Pooh! The harp was innocent enough with its fantastic spray of
arpeggios; it was used only as gilding to warm the bitter, wiry tone of
the fiddles. No, it was not the harp, Pobloff decided. The tam-tam, a
pulsatile instrument! Perhaps its mordant sound coupled to the hissing
of the fiddles, the cheeping of the wood-wind, and the roll of the harp;
perhaps--and then he was gripped by a thrilling thought.

He paced the length of the empty hall talking aloud. What an idea! Why
not put it into execution at once? But how? Pobloff moaned as he
realized its futility. He could secure no other musicians because every
one that once resided in Balak had disappeared; there was no hope for
their recrudescence. He tramped the parquet like a savage hyena. To
play the symphonic poem again, to rescue from eternity his lost