mite you! May the curtain fall on a gibbering epileptic!'

'Can't hear!' said Goldwater. 'Speak plainer.'

'I _will_ speak plainer, swine-head! Never shall a work of mine defile
itself in your dirty dollar-factory. I spit on you!' He spat viciously
into the telephone disk. 'Your father was a _Meshummad_ (apostate),
and your mother----'

But Goldwater had cut off the connection. Pinchas finished for his own
satisfaction: 'An Irish fire-woman.'

'That was worth ten cents,' he muttered, as he strode out into the
night. And patrolling the front of the theatre again, or leaning on
his cane as on a sword, he was warmed by the thought that his venom
had pierced through all the actor-manager's defences.

At last a change came over the nightmare. Striding from the envied,
illuminated Within appeared the Heathen Journalist, note-book in hand.
At sight of the author he shied. 'Must skedaddle, Pin-cuss,' he said
apologetically, 'if we're to get anything into to-morrow's paper. Your
people are so durned slow--nearly eleven, and only two acts over.
You'll have to brisk 'em up a bit. Good-bye.'

He shook the poet's hand and was off. With an inspiration Pinchas gave
chase. He caught the Journalist just boarding a car.

'Got your theatre ticket?' he panted.

'What for?'

'Give it me.'

The Journalist fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and threw him a
crumpled fragment. 'What in thunder----' he began. And then, to
Pinchas's relief, the car removed the querist.

For the moment the poet was feeling only the indignity of the
position, and the Heathen Journalist as trumpeter of his wrongs and
avenger of the Muses had not occurred to him. He smoothed out the
magic scrap, and was inside the suffocating, close-packed theatre
before the disconcerted janitor could meet the new situation. Pinchas
found the vacated journalistic chair in the stage-box; he was
installed therein before the managerial minions arrived on ejection
bent.

'This is _my_ house!' screamed Pinchas. 'I stay here! Let me
be--swine, serpents, Behemoth!'

'Sh!' came in a shower from every quarter. 'Sit down there! Turn him
out!' The curtain was going up; Pinchas was saved.

But only for more gruesome torture. The third act began. Hamlet
collogued with the Queen. The poet pricked up his ears. Whose language
was this? Certainly not Shakespeare's or his superior's. Angels and
ministers of grace defend him! this was only the illiterate jargon of
the hack playwright,