Ernest Ruddle! the name on the manuscript! The man of the restaurant and the gallery, the tears, the waiting at the stage door, were explained now. Ere we reached the stage door, the actress herself appeared in the corridor, on the arm of her maid. She was laughing, rather coarsely. We stepped aside to let her pass out into the night. “So the manager said he'd give me $50 more on the road,” she was saying, “and I said he would have to make it $75 more--gracious! what's this?” She had stumbled over something just outside the threshold of the stage door. Her companion stooped, while the actress jumped aside and looked down at the large black object with both fright and curiosity. “It's a man,” said the maid; “drunk, or asleep, or dead. He looks frozen. He's a tramp, I guess; hurry away! We'll tell the policeman on the corner.” The actress passed on, with a final look of half-aversion, half-pity, at the prostrate body. The comedian and I were both by that body within two seconds. “Frozen or starved, sure!” said the comedian. “Poor beggar! Look at his straw hat. Observe his death-clutch on the cane.” From down the alley came two sounds: one was a policeman's approaching footsteps; the other, of a woman's laughter. What, to be sure, was the dead or drunken body of an unknown vagabond to her? And it seems strange that I, who never exchanged speech with either the woman or the man, was the only one in the world who might recognize in the momentary contact of the living with the dead, a dramatic situation. XXII. -- “POOR YORICK” [Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_. Copyright, 1892, by J.B. Lippincott Company.] The name by which he was indicated on the playbills was Overfield. His real name was buried in the far past. By several members of the company to which he belonged he was often called “Poor Yorick.” I asked the leading juvenile of the company--young Bridges, who was supposed to attract women to the theatre, and for whose glorification “The Lady of Lyons” was sometimes revived at matinées--how the old man had acquired the nickname. “I gave it to him myself last season,” replied Bridges, loftily. “Can't you guess why? You remember the graveyard scene in 'Hamlet.' The skull of Yorick, you know, had lain in the earth three and twenty years. Yorick had been dead that long. Well, the old man had been dead for about the same length of time,--professionally dead, I mean. See?” It was true that, so far as being known by the world went, the old man was as good, or as bad, as dead. He no longer played other than quite unimportant parts. It was said by some one that he was the poorest actor and the noblest man in the country; a statement commended by Jennison, an Englishman who usually played villains, to this, that his were the worst art and best heart in the profession.