"Oh, nothing in particular. I ought not to have mentioned it." "Yes, you ought. Come, out with it!" "Well, I suppose I may as well. The fact is, the citizens of this place have decided to----" "Not another speech-making affair at the theater?" interrupted the boy, in horrified accents. "Well," blurted out Mr. Wattles, "that's just it." "I shan't be here. You know I've got to go ahead to the next town this afternoon." "Oh, no, you haven't," smiled the old gentleman. "The fact is, the sale is so big that I have felt justified in canceling the next two towns, and we are to stay here the remainder of the week. There's no getting out of it, my boy; the thing has got to come off, and this time you will have to make a speech." At first Al would not hear of this, and declared that he would start for home. But he at last allowed his companion's eloquence to overcome his objections, and agreed to remain. How he dreaded the ordeal no one but he ever knew, but he made up his mind that, as he put it to himself, he would "see the thing through." He prepared a brief speech, which he memorized, and which he hoped to be able to deliver without breaking down. Evening came only too soon, and Al, arrayed in a new dress suit, awaited the inevitable call for his appearance. Everything had been "cut and dried," and he knew that there was no escape. At the end of the first act of the play there arose a shout, "Allston! Allston!" "Go on, my boy," said Mr. Wattles, who, with his protege stood upon the stage, just behind the curtain. "What are you trembling for? This ought to be the proudest moment of your life." With these words he fairly pushed the boy before the audience. Then arose a whirlwind of applause. When it had subsided, Al tried to begin his speech. But to his utter consternation, he found that he had forgotten every word of it. But he was not, after all, obliged to deliver it. As he stood, trying to remember at least one word of the carefully prepared effort, a man suddenly advanced from the rear of one of the proscenium boxes, leveled a pistol at the boy's head and fired. The bullet whistled past Al's ear, but did not graze it. The next moment the would-be assassin was struggling in the hands of the other occupants of the box. He managed to free himself; then came another report, and the next moment Jack Farley lay dead on the floor of the box, a suicide. How he had escaped from the doom with which he had been threatened on the previous night, how he had succeeded in entering the theater without attracting attention, will never be known. Al's speech was forgotten in the excitement, and he was not obliged to make it, after all. * * * * * In a few weeks Al ceased to be a popular idol, but he was daily learning new "points" and becoming more and more valuable to his employer; he was already recognized as one of the brightest advance agents on the road.