Why nobody "nabbed" Ned was always a mystery to him afterward. Forgetting himself at the crisis he sprang boldly out of his chair and participated in the varied excitements ensuing behind the scenes as freely as if he owned the theatre. Perhaps he might not have been so eager to hear and see had he divined the influence that this incident would exert on his immediate future. He followed the "management" and the crowd of "supes," scene-shifters, call-boys, and "dead-heads" to the door of the dressing-room where the unlucky "first player" was to be called to account. This personage had divested himself of his stage toggery and stood there in his every-day clothes, a coarse, slouching, red-faced man in a brownish suit and a checked shirt. Within the room another actor was hastily arraying himself in the gaudy attire which the "first player" had been accustomed to wear as the "Player King." The substitute was almost pathetic in his anxiety as he dressed himself, nervously repeating aloud the "lines" and giving not an instant's notice to the crowd of bystanders about the open door nor to the interview between the management and the "first player." This was sufficiently stormy. The unfortunate "first player" got his walking-papers in no measured terms. Mr. Gorham took occasion to interject some very severe remarks, although the affair was really none of his business, the grievance lying between the manager of the company and the actor. "It's none of _your_ funeral, anyhow," cried the goaded "first player" indignantly. He snapped his fingers in Gorham's face, giving the high silk hat, which was always precariously perched on its owner's head, a fillip that sent it rolling on the floor among the crowd. Gorham's arrogant and peremptory manners made him a very unpopular man. Nevertheless it might have been an accident--although it looked singularly like design--that the hat was in a moment trampled into a shapeless wreck by twoscore sturdy feet. Even when under no provocation, he showed in every gesture how vehement and impulsive was his nature. Now, insulted in his own theatre, he shook off the slight restraints which he acknowledged. It suited his humor to consider the "first player's" demonstration as a blow. He looked positively tigerish as he sprung upon the actor. The energy of his wrath gave much "power to his elbow;" the blows that fell from his clenched fist had a wonderfully resonant compact sound,--it made Ned wince to think that a man's head and face received them. The "first player" could do little to defend himself. The crowd, that always turns to the successful side, lifted not a finger to aid or protect him. And high above all the tumult the "Player King," putting on now his robes of state, and now his tinsel crown, daubing his grave anxious face with red and white, repeated his "lines" heedless of the commotion.