ne.

Alarmed by the absence of their husbands, the musicians' wives hung
around the building pestering the officials. Pobloff has been found,
they were informed, in a solitary fit, on the floor of the auditorium.
The stage was in the greatest confusion--chairs and music stands being
piled about as if a tornado had visited the place. Not a musician was
there, and with the missing was Luga, the harp-player. A thousand wild
rumors prevailed. The men, tired of tyrannical treatment, brutal
rehearsals and continual abuse, had risen in a body and thrashed their
leader; then fearing arrest, fled to the suburbs carrying off Luga with
them as dangerous witness. But the summer-garden, where they usually
foregathered, had not seen them since the Sunday previous--Luga not for
weeks. This had been ascertained by interested scouts. The fact that
Luga was with the rebels gave rise to disconcerting gossip. Possibly her
husband had discovered a certain flirtation--heads shook knowingly. At
five o'clock the news spread that Pobloff had by means of a trap in the
stage, dropped the entire orchestra into the cellar, where they lay
entombed in a half-dying condition. No one could trace this tale to its
source, thought it was believed to have emanated from the oboe-player's
wife. Half a hundred women rushed to the opera house and fell upon their
hands and knees, scratching at the iron cellar gratings, and calling
loudly through the little windows whose thick panes of glass were grimed
with age. Finding nothing, hearing nothing, the dissatisfied crew only
needed an angry explosion of bitterness from the lips of the
horn-player's spouse to hatch hatred in their bosoms and to set them
upon Pobloff at his home.

Now knowing that he was safe for the moment behind the thick walls of
the opera house, he consoled himself with some bread and wine which his
servant fetched him. And then he fell to thinking hard.

No, not a soul suspected the real reason for the disappearance of the
band--that secret was his forever. By the light of a lamp in the
property room he danced with joy at his escape from danger; and the
tension being relaxed, he burst out sobbing: "Luga! Luga! Oh, where are
you, my little harpist! I have not forgotten you, my violet. Let me go
to you!" Pobloff rolled over the carpetless floor in an ecstasy of
grief, the lamp barely casting enough light to cover his burly figure,
his cheeks trilling with tears.

IV

A thin rift of sunshi