as just
gone; the people are set against plays and players. The supervisor
refuses the license."

With which the manager relapsed into silence, rueful and melancholy.
Their road ran steadily upward from the sleepy valley, skirting a wood
where the luxuriance of the overhanging foliage and the bright
autumnal tint of the leaves were like a scene of a spectacular play.
Out of breath from the steepness of the ascent, and, with his hand
pressed to his side, Barnes suddenly called a halt, seated himself on
a stump, his face somewhat drawn, and spoke for the first time since
he left the hamlet.

"Let's rest a moment. Something catches me occasionally here," tapping
his heart. "Ah, that's better! The pain has left. No; it's nothing.
The machinery is getting old, that's all! Let me see--Ah, yes!" And he
drew a cigar from his pocket. "Perhaps there lies a crumb of comfort
in the weed!"

The manager smoked contemplatively, like a man pushed to the verge of
disaster, weighing the slender chances of mending his broken fortunes.
But as he pondered his face gradually lightened with a faint glimmer
of satisfaction. His mind, seeking for a straw, caught at a possible
way out of this labyrinth of difficulties and in a moment he had
straightened up, puffing veritable optimistic wreaths. He arose
buoyantly; before he reached the inn the crumb of comfort had become a
loaf of assurance.

At the tavern the manager immediately sought mine host, stating his
desire to give a number of free performances in the dining-room of the
hotel. The landlord demurred stoutly; he was an inn-keeper, not the
proprietor of a play-house. Were not tavern and theater inseparable,
retorted Barnes? The country host had always been a patron of the
histrionic art. Beneath his windows the masque and interlude were
born. The mystery, harlequinade and _divertissement_ found shelter in
a pot-house.

In a word, so indefatigably did he ply arguments, appealing alike to
clemency and cupidity--the custom following such a course--that the
landlord at length reluctantly consented, and soon after the
dining-room was transformed into a temple of art; stinted, it is true,
for flats, drops, flies and screens, but at least more tenable than
the roofless theaters of other days, when a downpour drenched the
players and washed out the public, causing rainy tears to drip from
Ophelia's nose and rivulets of rouge to trickle down my Lady
Slipaway's marble neck and shoulders. In