"I will! I will!" said the man, desperately, forcing his way toward the stage. Two of the ushers and an officer had hurried down the aisle and seized him by the arms. The piano-player rose from his neglected instrument and caught him also. "Let me go!" roared the man, shoving them aside with superhuman strength, apparently. "She's my daughter, I tell you! I will have her!" The lights on the stage were suddenly turned up. A hard-featured man came forward and grasped the child by the arm. "What's all this row?" he cried; "I'm the manager of Mademoiselle Hélène. Her mother left the child with me. She gets good food and clothes and is well taken care of. What more does she want?" "I want my papa! Oh, I want you!" cried the little girl. "And you shall have me, dear." "No," said the man on the stage, roughly, "she shall not!" "Gentlemen," cried the other man, turning about and facing the audience. "Friends, there is my little daughter. Her mother ran away from me, left me. I haven't seen Nellie for two years. I just happened in here to-night and recognized her, and----" "Give him his daughter," broke out a burly man in the third row of the parquet, rising in his seat as he spoke and shaking his fist at the man on the stage, "or----" The house was in a perfect uproar now. The women in tears, the men screaming with flushed, excited faces. "Let him have her!" "Give her up!" "Let the child go with her father!" "Shame! Shame!" "Mob him!" "Lynch the wretch!" The man on the stage fairly quailed before this outburst of popular passion; the ushers and officer had released the other man, but before he could take a step the local manager appeared on the stage in the midst of the confusion. Lifting his hand to the crowd, he finally succeeded in stilling the tumult. "I have heard it all!" he cried, as soon as he could command attention. "This theatre don't want to part father and daughter. Give the child to the man. And get out of here!" he added, turning fiercely and shaking his fist at the hard-featured man on the stage. The latter let go the child's arm and shrank back in the wings, followed by the jeers of the crowd. Then the local manager took the little girl in his arms, stepped over the footlights, and handed her to the man who had claimed her. He lifted her up, kissed her, and pressed her tenderly to his breast. She clasped her little arms around his neck and dropped her head on his shoulder with a low cry of content. "Thank you, sir!" said the man to the manager; "thank you all, ladies and gentlemen! Oh, I have got her back again!" He turned with his precious burden and walked rapidly down the aisle, passed out of the door, and disappeared in the night.