morality play. This
production, called by its authors, "Ten Knights in a Barroom"--was, in
fact, so successful that the players promised themselves the pleasure of
repeating it daily during the ensuing month.

But this proved to be impossible; for that night ol' Uncle George was
called home by a fire in his shoe store.

The management declined to make use of ol' Uncle George's properties
while he remained in town for fear that he might have occasion to use
them himself, and thus bring about some slight unpleasantness in their
hitherto delightful relations. Meanwhile the members of the company
fidgeted and chafed under the delay.

A rehearsal attempted in Canes' barn was, for some unknown reason, a
decided frost. Then they tried Stucky Richards' barn, which was right
next door to ol' Uncle George's; and although things went somewhat
better there, they lacked the zest of the initial performance.

Stucky's properties, as far as they went, were above criticism; his
workbench made an excellent bar; his broken chairs were deliciously
hopeless; his cuspidor was admitted by all to be much better than ol'
Uncle George's; his bottles and glassware were vastly superior; but
there he stopped.

He had no cider press, and no means of getting one. He had no cider; and
worst of all he had no spigot-equipped cask without which no
disreputable saloon can exist.

But this was not all that troubled the Ten Knights in a Barroom company.
Professional jealousy crept in to plague their once placid ranks. By
secretly consulting the faded poster in Severn's blacksmith shop (from
which he had adapted the name for his production) Sube learned that he
had overlooked a character. The next time the company assembled he
attempted to rectify his error.

[Illustration]

"Say, you kids," he began; "we made a mistake about one thing. You can't
all be Old Soaks. Somebody's got to be a little ragged girl that pleads
with her drunken father to come home with her. Now who's goin' to be the
little girl?"

Cathead thought he scented a conspiracy, and wishing to be on the safe
side, volunteered to take the part of the drunken father.

"Not on your life!" cried Sube. "Somebody's got to be a little girl, and
you'd make the best one of anybody here. Wouldn't he, kids?"

Stucky and Cottontop were positive that Cathead would make an ideal
girl, and they so expressed themselves. But Cathead thought otherwise.

"I won't be a girl! I ain't goin' to be a