And then came the night of the benefit performance in the Town Hall. St. Eustace had subscribed for fifty tickets at a dollar apiece, and had then returned them to the committee to be resold. As a result of this, and of the activity of the class ticket-sellers, the hall on the night of the entertainment was altogether too small for the purpose. The villagers had responded generously to the appeal, and had bought seats until it had begun to look as though there would be no places left for the students. But every one in the end managed to squeeze in somehow; and as every member of the audience, whether he saw the performance from a comfortable seat in the front of the hall or only caught an occasional glimpse of it from behind a wall of less fortunate persons, paid a dollar for the privilege; and as the expenses were almost nil, the exchequer when the curtain went up held the very satisfactory total of $354, a fraction over $50 for each of the fire victims. There is not space enough here to do justice to the excellency of the program. It will serve to say that some twenty boys sang, played on a marvelous variety of instruments, from accordion to piano, and recited. Williams gave operatic selections on a zither, and for encore rendered Way Down Upon the Suwanee River; a youth named Billings sang Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground, not so much because it was intensely musical as because it was about the only thing that accommodated itself to his voice; Todd sat down in a straight-backed chair at the front of the stage and did all kinds of stunts on a banjo, which pleased his audience vastly; Osgood sang The New Bully in a manner that sent the younger boys into spasms of laughter; Trevor, attired in hastily improvised costume, sang a number of coster songs in a sweet tenor, and gained much applause; Jones recited the tragic termination of the baseball career of one named Casey; and so it went. And when Part First had come to an end the stage was set for the first of the Scenes from Tom Brown at Rugby, and it fell to Dick, as his contribution to the evening’s entertainment, to go before the curtain and explain what was to follow. His appearance was greeted with the heartiest applause that had thus far fallen to the lot of any. The audience was in good humor, Dick was a hero, and here was an opportunity to show approval of the gallant rescuer. The boys cheered, the villagers clapped and stamped applause, the less polite members of the community that fringed the gathering yelled vociferously, and Dick--well, he did a most unaccountable thing: he grew pale, faltered, and even turned toward the wing as though meditating escape. “Such modesty!” breathed a kind-hearted lady in the second row. But after the first impulse toward flight Dick waited for silence, white-faced, unsmiling, and when it came made his speech calmly, in well-modulated but unenthusiastic voice, bowing himself off finally under a second bombardment of applause.