“That’s good!” laughed Demarest. “Why, your performance last night is the talk of the town. Have you seen the papers yet?” Dick shook his head smilingly, and the actor raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Great Scott!” he cried, in astonishment. “Not looked at the papers! What do you think of that!” He dragged a large bundle of newspapers from his pocket and held them up. “Notices in every decent New York daily!” he cried triumphantly. “And such notices! Listen to this!” Swiftly unfolding one, he found the right place and read unctuously: “‘Jarvis of Yale,’ produced last night—um—um—— The acting of Austin Demarest in the title part was a treat which has not been our privilege to witness in many moons. His rendering of _Lance Jarvis_ was masterly in its simple directness, its naturalness and truth, while at the same time his emotional range was wide and his pathos quite distinguished from bathos. He seemed, more than almost any actor which we can at present recall, to get under the skin of the character he was portraying. He was the typical college man. Manly, true-hearted, generous, full of the eternal joy of youth. One would almost have supposed that he had stepped directly on the stage from the college campus so near at hand. A tremendous, and widely enthusiastic audience crowded the old theatre to the very doors. It is quite safe to predict that ‘Jarvis of Yale’ will settle down very shortly for a long Broadway run. Certainly it would be hard to find a more clean-cut, dramatic, thoroughly wholesome play, without a dull moment from start to finish, than this maiden effort of the most popular and able leading man of the past season, who received much of his early training in the company of the late Richard Manton.” Demarest tossed the paper aside and turned to Dick. “There! What do you think of that? There’s a lot more about you and the rest of the company that I skipped. Not act, indeed!” Merriwell’s face was serious and his eyes very bright. “But I didn’t act at all,” he said quickly. “I just learned the lines and left the rest to luck. All I did was to try and imagine what I would feel like and what I’d do if I were in _Lance Jarvis’_ place.” The young actor laughed. “That’s what we all try to do,” he returned; “but we don’t always succeed. It’s a shame, though, that I should get all the credit of this! It doesn’t seem a bit fair. People ought to know that I wasn’t the fellow who played last night. I tell you it makes me feel pretty mean to take another man’s laurels.” “But that’s the only reason why I did it,” Dick objected. “It was to save you.” “And you succeeded,” the other put in quickly. “I builded better than I knew when I sent you that wire. Now tell me all about it. How did everything go off? Did any one suspect? How did Marion take things?” * * * * *