locked the door behind
him and thrust the key into his pocket.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE OLD CEMETERY

The engagement at the new St. Charles was both memorable and
profitable, The Picayune, before the fifties, an audacious sheet,
being especially kind to the players. "This paper," said a writer of
the day, "was as full of witticisms as one of Thackeray's dreams after
a light supper, and, as for Editors Straws and Phazma, they are poets
who eat, talk and think rhyme." The Picayune contained a poem
addressed to Miss Carew, written by Straws in a cozy nook in the
veranda at the Lake End, with his absinthe before him and the remains
of an elaborate repast about him. It was then quite the fashion to
write stanzas to actresses; the world was not so prosaic as it is now,
and even the president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, penned
graceful verses to a fair ward of Thalia.

One noon, a few days after the opening performance, several members of
the company were late for rehearsal and Barnes strode impatiently to
and fro, glancing at his watch and frowning darkly. To avenge himself
for the remissness of the players, he roared at the stage carpenters
who were constructing a balcony and to the supers who were shifting
flats to the scenery room. The light from an open door at the back of
the stage dimly illumined the scene; overhead, in the flies, was
intense darkness; while in front, the auditorium yawned like a chasm,
in no wise suggestive of the brilliant transformation at night.

"Ugh!" said Susan, standing in one of the entrances. "It is like
playing to ghosts! Fancy performing to an audience of specters!
Perhaps the phantoms of the past really do assemble in their old
places on occasions like this. Only you can't hear them applaud or
laugh."

"Are you looking for admirers among ghosts?" remarked Hawkes,
ironically.

"Don't," she returned, with a little shiver.

"So, ladies and gentlemen, you are all here at last?" exclaimed
Barnes, interrupting this cheerful conversation. "Some of you are late
again to-day. It must not happen again. Go to Victor's, Moreau's, or
Miguel's, as much as you please. If you have a headache or a heartache
in consequence, that is your own affair, but I am not to be kept
waiting the next day."

"Victor's, indeed!" retorted the elastic old lady. "As if--"

"No one supposed, Madam, that at your age"--began the manager.

"At my age! If you think--"

"Are you all ready?" interr