When the murmured comments of the spectators had ceased, Mhor, looking extraordinarily Roman, held up his hand as if appealing to a raging mob, and said, "Peace, ho! Let us hear him," whereupon Jock, breathing heavily in his brother's face, proceeded to give Antony's oration over Caesar. He did it very well, and the Mhor as the Mob supplied appropriate growls at intervals; indeed, so much did Antony's eloquence inspire Mhor that, when Jock shouted, "Light the pyre!" (a sentence introduced to bring in the charade word), instead of merely pretending with an unlighted taper, Mhor dashed to the fire, lit the taper, and before anyone could stop him thrust it among the dry twigs, which at once began to light and crackle. Immediately all was confusion. "Mhor!" shouted Jean, as she sprang towards the stage. "Gosh, Maggie!" Jock yelled, as he grabbed the burning twigs, but it was "Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay," who really put out the fire by rolling on it wrapped in an eiderdown quilt. "Eh, ye ill callant," said Bella Bathgate. "Ye wee deevil," said Mrs. M'Cosh, "ye micht hev had us a' burned where we sat, and it Christmas too!" "What made you do it, sonny?" Jean asked. "It made it so real," Mhor explained, "and I knew we could always throw them out of the window if they really blazed. What's the use of having a funeral pyre if you don't light it?" The actors departed to prepare for the next performance Jock coming back to put his head in at the door to ask if they had guessed the first part of the word. Jean said she thought it must be incendiarism. "Funeral," said Miss Watson brightly. "Huch," said Jock; "it's a word of one syllable." "I think," Jean said as the door shut on Jock--I think I know what the word is--pyre." "Oh, really," said Miss Watson, "I'm all shaking yet with the fright I got. He's an awful bad wee boy that--sort of regardless. He needs a man to look after him." "I'll never forget," said Miss Teenie, "once I was staying with a friend of ours, a doctor; his mother and our mother were cousins, you know, and when I looked--I was doing my hair at the time--I found that the curtain had blown across the gas and was blazing. If I had been in our own house I would just have rushed out screaming, but when you're away from home you've more feeling of responsibility and I just stood on a chair and pulled at the curtain till I brought it down and stamped on it. My hands were all scorched, and of course the curtain was beyond hope, but when the doctor saw it, he said, 'Teenie,' he said--his mither and ours were cousins, you know--'you're just a wee marvel.' That was what he said--'a wee marvel.'" Jean said, "You _were_ brave," and one of the guests said that presence of mind was a wonderful thing, and then the next act was ready.