Seymour behind the scenes was giving orders to ring down the curtain to prepare the stage for “The New Woman.” “Don’t do it unless you mean it for keeps, Mill,” remonstrated the property-man. “The devil’s in the old rag, I believe. It might not go up again easily, and I’m sure, from the racket out there, they are going to have the basket trick over again.” For the front row of bullet-heads was conducting itself like a row of gallery gods, and effervescing with whistlings and shrill cries. The applause was general and tumultuous, growing louder when the over-cautious father called out “No pistols and _no knives_!” “Oh, they can take care of themselves,” said a former adherent of his proposition, for the feat was really very clever, and very cleverly exploited, and he was ready to accredit a considerable amount of sagacity to youths who could get up so amusing an entertainment. No one was alert to notice--save his mere presence as some messenger or purveyor of properties--a dazed-looking young mountaineer, dripping with the rain, who walked down the main aisle and stepped awkwardly over the footlights, upon the stage. He paused bewildered at the wings, and Lucien Royce behind the scenes, turning, found himself face to face with Owen Haines. The sight of the wan, ethereal countenance brought back like some unhallowed spell the real life he had lived of late into the vanishing dream-life he was living now. But the actualities are constraining. “You want me?” he said, with a sudden premonition of trouble. “I hev s’arched fur you-uns fur days,” Haines replied, a strange compassion in his eyes, contemplating which Lucien Royce felt his blood go cold. “But the Simses deceived me ez ter whar ye be; they never told me till ter-night, an’ then I hed ter tell ’em why I wanted you-uns.” “Why?” demanded Royce, spellbound by the look in the man’s eyes, and almost overmastered by the revulsion of feeling in the last moment, the quaking of an unnamed terror at his heart. Nevertheless, with his acute and versatile faculties he heard the clamors of the recall still thundering in the auditorium, he noted the passing of the facetiously bedight figures for the farce. He was even aware of glances of curiosity from one or two of the scene-shifters, and had the prudence to draw Haines, who heard naught and saw only the face before him, into a corner. “Why?” reiterated Royce. “Why do you want me?” “Bekase,” said Haines, “Peter Knowles seen ye fling them queer shoes an’ belt an’ clothes inter the quicklime, an’ drawed the idee ez ye hed slaughtered somebody bodaciously, an’ kivered ’em thar too.” The juggler reddened slightly at the mention of the jaunty attire and the thought of its sacrifice, but he was out of countenance before the sentence was concluded, and gravely dismayed. “Oh, pshaw!” he exclaimed, seeking to reassure himself. “They would have to prove that somebody is dead to make that charge stick.”