Do you 'spect that was _real_ water, Nan Sherwood? He'd ha' been
drowned, wouldn't he?"

"I guess it was real water," laughed Nan. "But they wouldn't let him be
drowned in a picture."

"I forget it's a picture," sighed little Inez, exhibiting thereby true
dramatic feeling for the art of acting. To her small mind the pantomime
seemed real.

Another reel was started. The projection of it flickered on the screen
until it dazzled one's eyes to try to watch it.

"Goodness!" gasped Pearl Graves. "I hope that won't keep up."

The excited little Hebrew who owned the theatre ran, sputtering, up the
aisle, and climbed into the gallery to expostulate with the operator.
There was an explosion of angry voices from the operator's box when the
proprietor reached it.

The reel was halted again--this time without the projection of the usual
"Wait a minute, please," card. The next instant there was another
explosion; but not of voices.

A glare of greenish flame was projected from the box in the gallery where
the machine was located--then followed a series of crackling, snapping
explosions!

It was indeed startling, and there were a general craning of necks and
excited whispering in the audience; but it might have gone no further had
it not been for Linda Riggs.

It could not have been with malice--for the result swept Linda herself
into the vortex of excitement and peril that followed; but the railroad
president's daughter shrieked at the loudest pitch of her voice:

"Fire! fire! We'll all be burned to death! _Fire_!"

"Be still!" "Sit down!" were commands that instantly sounded from all
parts of the house.

But the mischief was done, and Linda continued to shriek in apparently an
abandonment of terror:

"_Fire! Fire!_"

Other nervous people took up the cry. Nearly half a thousand spectators
were seated in the picture theatre and the smell of smoke was in their
nostrils and the glare of fire above them.

For something, surely, was burning in the operator's box. The danger of
the inflammable film was in the minds of all. A surge of the crowd toward
the main exit signaled the first panic.

The outgoing rush was met by those who (not understanding the commotion)
had been waiting at the back for seats. These people would not give way
easily as the frightened audience pushed up the main aisle.

Those at the sides escaped more easily, for there was an exit on either
side of the audience room. In the case of Nan Sherwood