The hall seated about 400 persons, and the stage was a contrivance striking as to coloring as well as variety of pieces. It added no little to the sport of the evening by the squeaks it gave out as the heavy man walked across, and by the falling down of the calico wings and by the persistent refusal of the curtain to go down at the proper moment on the tableau. At the back of the room the benches rose one above the other until the one at the rear was near the grimy ceiling. These benches were occupied by the toughs of the town, who treated each other to peanuts and slapped one another over the head with their soft, shapeless hats, and laughed inordinately when some fellow's hat was thrown out of his reach into the crowd. The play was Wilkie Collins' "New Magdalen," and the part of Mercy was taken by a large and magnificently proportioned woman, a blonde, and in Johnny's eyes she seemed something divine, with her grace and majesty of motion. He took a personal pride in her at once and wanted her to come out triumphant in the end, regardless of any conventional morality. True, his admiration for the dark little woman's tragic utterance at times drew him away from his breathless study of the queenly Mercy, but such moments were few. Within a half hour he was deeply in love with the heroine and wondered how she could possibly endure the fat man who played the part of Horace, and who pitched into the practicable supper of cold ham, biscuit and currant wine with a gusto that suggested gluttony as the reason for his growing burden of flesh. And so the play went on. The wonderful old lady in the cap and spectacles, the mysterious dark little woman who popped in at short intervals to say "Beware!" in a very deep contralto voice, the tender and repentant Mercy, all were new and wonderful, beautiful things to the boys, and though they stood up the whole evening through, it passed so swiftly that the curtain's fall drew from them long sighs of regret. From that time on they were to dream of that wonderful play and that beautiful, repentant woman. So securely was she enthroned in their regard that no rude and senseless jest could ever unseat her. Of course, the men, as they went out, laughed and joked in the manner of such men, and swore in their disappointment because it was a serious drama in place of the comedy and the farce which they had expected. "It's a regular sell," Bill said. "I wanted to hear old Plunket stid of all that stuff about nothin'. That was a lunkin' good-lookin' woman though," he added, with a coarse suggestion in his voice, which exasperated Johnny to the pitch of giving him a kick on the heel as he walked in front. "Hyare, young feller, look where you're puttin' your hoofs!" Bill growled, looking about.