Conversation was temporarily impossible, so the trio gazed eagerly around them. Just ahead, sat a shop girl in a shabby best dress, with a head of blonde, mismatched hair, and beside her, her escort, an Irish mechanic, who shifted his head from time to time as the unaccustomed collar scraped his neck. Across the aisle was a family of towheaded Swedes, the father self-conscious in his carefully pressed black suit; the mother, watchful of her two mischievous, blue-eyed urchins. Young gallants of the neighborhood filled the boxes at either side of the auditorium, taking this, the most expensive, means of proving their devotion to their lady loves. In the rear of the theater were the first and second balconies, occupied by voluble men and women of all ages and nationalities. Ahead, hung the stage curtain, decorated with staring advertisements, "Lamson, the neighborhood undertaker," "Trade at the corner grocery. Vegetables always at the lowest market prices," "Snider's drug store, prescriptions, choice candies, and camera supplies," and the like. From somewhere in the heights came a sharp "rap-rap-rap," which echoed even to the more forward rows on the main floor. "Gallery," explained John. "Fellow knocks on the back of one of the benches to make the boys behave." His jaws resumed the burden of reducing that persistent caramel to a swallowable state. The orchestra of five filed solemnly in through the little door beneath the stage and took their accustomed places. A dart, propelled by an urchin of the upper regions who evidently had no fear of the monitor's stick, sailed serenely downward and found a resting place in a blonde lock of the salesgirl's hair. The footlights flashed on, and the musicians struck up a lilting, popular air, as Sid cleared his throat. "Then the cowboy--" he began. "Have another?" interrupted John, extending the box of tenacious goodies. "Sh-h," whispered Louise. "There goes the curtain." Why Martha had selected the hapless vocation of milliner's apprentice, John could not understand. For it was in Madame's little millinery shop in New York that Mordaunt Merrilac, gentleman by appearance, and leader of a desperate band of counterfeiters, met and became infatuated with the heroine. This he revealed in a soliloquy punctuated by frequent tugging at his black mustache, and strode majestically to the rear of the long, gloomy basement in which the first act was laid. There he joined three overalled mechanics in shirtsleeves, who puttered gingerly about a table on which were mysterious vats and a brightly glowing electric crucible. "Is all in readiness?" growled Mordaunt. "Aye, master." "Into the acid vat with the plate, then." He drew out a jewelled watch and studied the dial with knitted brows. "Ten long minutes before we know of our success." A muffled scream, long-drawn and filled with terror, broke in upon the silence which followed. Louise, Sid, and John leaned anxiously forward on the very edges of their seats.