oon, when the colliers are just coming home. There! What?
Isn't that exactly the idea? Well! Will you be ready at once,
_now_?"

He looked excitedly at the young men. They nodded with slow gravity,
as if they were already _braves_. And they turned to put on their
boots. Soon they were all trooping down to Lumley, Mr. May prancing
like a little circus-pony beside Alvina, the four young men rolling
ahead.

"What do you think of it?" cried Mr. May. "We've saved the
situation--what? Don't you think so? Don't you think we can
congratulate ourselves."

They found Mr. Houghton fussing about in the theatre. He was on
tenterhooks of agitation, knowing Madame was ill.

Max gave a brilliant display of yodelling.

"But I must _explain_ to them," cried Mr. May. "I must _explain_ to
them what yodel means."

And turning to the empty theatre, he began, stretching forth his
hand.

"In the high Alps of Switzerland, where eternal snows and glaciers
reign over luscious meadows full of flowers, if you should chance to
awaken, as I have done, in some lonely wooden farm amid the mountain
pastures, you--er--you--let me see--if you--no--if you should chance
to _spend the night_ in some lonely wooden farm, amid the upland
pastures, dawn will awake you with a wild, inhuman song, you will
open your eyes to the first gleam of icy, eternal sunbeams, your
ears will be ringing with weird singing, that has no words and no
meaning, but sounds as if some wild and icy god were warbling to
himself as he wandered among the peaks of dawn. You look forth
across the flowers to the blue snow, and you see, far off, a small
figure of a man moving among the grass. It is a peasant singing his
mountain song, warbling like some creature that lifted up its voice
on the edge of the eternal snows, before the human race began--"

During this oration James Houghton sat with his chin in his hand,
devoured with bitter jealousy, measuring Mr. May's eloquence. And
then he started, as Max, tall and handsome now in Tyrolese costume,
white shirt and green, square braces, short trousers of chamois
leather stitched with green and red, firm-planted naked knees, naked
ankles and heavy shoes, warbled his native Yodel strains, a piercing
and disturbing sound. He was flushed, erect, keen tempered and
fierce and mountainous. There was a fierce, icy passion in the man.
Alvina began to understand Madame's subjection to him.

Louis and Geoffrey did a farce dialogue, two foreig