f your principals in mind when I wrote my scenario," sighed
Ruth. "But I could not put my mind to that same subject now. I am
discouraged, Mr. Hammond."

"I would not feel that way if I were you, Miss Ruth," he advised, trying,
as everybody else did, to cheer her. "You will get another good idea, and
like all other born writers, you will just _have_ to give expression to
it. Meantime, of course, if I get hold of a promising scenario, I shall
try to produce it."

"I hope you will find a good one, Mr. Hammond."

He smiled rather ruefully. "Of course, there is scarcely anybody on the
lot who hasn't a picture play in his or her pocket. I was possibly unwise
last week to offer five hundred dollars spot cash for a play I could make
use of, for now I suppose there will be fifty to read. Everybody, from
Jacks, the property man, to the old hermit, believes he can write a
scenario."

"Who is the hermit?" asked Ruth, with some curiosity.

"I don't know. Nobody seems to know who he is about Herringport. He was
living in an old fish-house down on the Point when we came here last week
with the full strength of the company. And I have made use of the old
fellow in your 'Seaside Idyl'.

"He seems to be a queer duck. But he has some idea of the art of acting,
it seems. Director Jim Hooley is delighted with him. But they tell me the
old fellow is scribbling all night in his hut. The scenario bug has
certainly bit that old codger. He's out for my five hundred dollars," and
the producing manager laughed again.

"I hope you get a good script," said Ruth earnestly. "But don't ask me to
read any of them, Mr. Hammond. It does seem as though I never wanted to
look at a scenario again!"

"Then you are going to miss some amusement in this case," he chuckled.

"Why so?"

"I tell you frankly I do not expect much from even those professional
actors. It was my experience even before I went into the motion picture
business that plays submitted by actors were always full of all the old
stuff--all the old theatrical tricks and the like. Actors are the most
insular people in existence, I believe. They know how plays should be
written to fulfill the tenets of the profession; but invention is
'something else again'."

The young people who had motored so far were welcomed by many of Mr.
Hammond's company who had acted in "The Forty-Niners" and had met Ruth and
her friends in the West, as related in "Ruth Fielding in the Saddle."

The shacks t