t
contributor."

"The prodigal!" said the doctor in an aside to the landlord. "He's
holding up a piece of gold. It's the first time ever patroon was a
spendthrift!"

But Mauville's words, on the whole, furthered the manager's project,
and the audience remained in its integrity, while Balthazar, a
property helmet in hand, descended from his palace and trod the aisles
in his drab trunk-hose and purple cloak, a royal mendicant, in whose
pot soon jingled the pieces of silver. No one shirked his admission
fee and some even gave in excess; the helmet teemed with riches; once
it had saved broken heads, now it repaired broken fortunes, its
properties magical, like the armor of Pallas.

"How did you like the play, Mr. Saint-Prosper?" said Barnes, as he
approached that person.

"Much; and as for the players"--a gleam of humor stealing over his
dark features--"'peerless' was not too strong."

"'Your approbation likes me most, my lord,'" quoted the manager, and
passed quickly on with his tin pot, in a futile effort to evade the
outstretched hand of his whilom helper.

Thanking the audience for their generosity and complimenting them on
their intelligence, the self-constituted lord of the treasury vanished
once more behind the curtain. The orchestra of two struck up a negro
melody; the audience rose again, the women lingering to exchange their
last innocent gossip about prayer-meeting, or about the minister who
"knocked the theologic dust from the pulpit cushions in the good old
orthodox way," when some renegade exclaimed: "Clear the room for a
dance!"

Jerusha's shawl straightway fell from her shoulders; Hannah's bonnet
was whipped from her head; Nathaniel paused on his way to the stable
yard to bring out the team and a score of willing hands obeyed the
injunction amid laughing encouragement from the young women whose feet
already were tapping the floor in anticipation of the Virginia Reel,
Two Sisters, Hull's Victory, or even the waltz, "lately imported from
the Rhine." A battered Cremona appeared like magic and

"In his shirt of check and tallowed hair
The fiddler sat in his bull-rush chair,"

while "'Twas Monnie Musk in busy feet and Monnie Musk by
heart"--old-fashioned "Monnie Musk" with "first couple join right
hands and swing," "forward six" and "across the set"; an honest dance
for country folk that only left regrets when it came to "Good Night
for aye to Monnie Musk," although foll