el. The audience,
under the sway of the comic, ignored Dick and Daisy Bell. Their turn was
spoiled. The Davis turn was "queered," as Wilton impressed it. Michael's
block was knocked off within the meaning of the term. And the audience,
on the other side of the curtain, was edified and delighted.

Dick and Daisy could not continue. The audience wanted what was behind
the curtain, not in front of it. Michael was taken off stage thoroughly
throttled by one of the stage-hands, and the curtain arose on the full
set--full, save for the one empty chair. The boys in the audience first
realized the connection between the empty chair and the previous uproar,
and began clamouring for the absent dog. The audience took up the cry,
the dogs barked more excitedly, and five minutes of hilarity delayed the
turn which, when at last started, was marked by rustiness and erraticness
on the part of the dogs and by great peevishness on the part of Wilton
Davis.

"Never mind, honey," his imperturbable wife assured him in a stage
whisper. "We'll just ditch that dog and get a regular one. And, anyway,
we've put one over on that Daisy Bell. I ain't told you yet what she
said about me, only last week, to some of my friends."

Several minutes later, still on the stage and handling his animals, the
husband managed a chance to mutter to his wife: "It's the dog. It's him
I'm after. I'm going to lay him out."

"Yes, dearest," she agreed.

The curtain down, with a gleeful audience in front and with the dogs back
in the room over the stage, Wilton Davis descended to look for Michael,
who, instead of cowering in some corner, stood between the legs of the
stage-hand, quivering yet from his mishandling and threatening to fight
as hard as ever if attacked. On his way, Davis encountered the song-and-
dance couple. The woman was in a tearful rage, the man in a dry one.

"You're a peach of a dog man, you are," he announced belligerently.
"Here's where you get yours."

"You keep away from me, or I'll lay you out," Wilton Davis responded
desperately, brandishing a short iron bar in his right hand. "Besides,
you just wait if you want to, and I'll lay you out afterward. But first
of all I'm going to lay out that dog. Come on along and see--damn him!
How was I to know? He was a new one. He never peeped in rehearsal. How
was I to know he was going to yap when we arranged the set behind you?"

"You've raised hell," the manager of the thea