t ten o'clock Bill, the garage man, came and whispered something to
Casey, who growled an oath and reached almost unconsciously for his
crutches before trying to get up; so soon is a habit born in a man.

"What they raisin' thunder about?" he asked apathetically, when Bill had
helped him across the gutter and into the street. "Didn't the crowd turn
out like they expected?" Casey's tone was dismal. You simply cannot be a
cripple for twenty-four hours, and sit up playing unlucky poker all night
and all day and well into another night, without losing some of your
animation; not even if you are Casey Ryan. "Hell, I missed that train
again," he added heavily, when he heard it whistle into the railroad yard.

"Too bad. You oughta be on it, Casey," Bill said ominously.

At the garage the Barrymores were waiting for him in their stage clothes
and make-up. The show lady had wept seams down through her rouge, and the
beads on her lashes had clotted unbecomingly.

"Mister, you certainly have wished a sorry deal on to us," she exclaimed,
when Casey came hobbling through the doorway. "Fifteen years on the stage
and _this_ never happened to us before. We've took our bad luck with our
good luck and lived honest and respectable and self-respecting, and here,
at last, ill fortune has tied the can on to us. I know you meant well and
all that, Mister, but we certainly have had a raw deal handed out to us in
this town. We--certainly--have!"

"We got till noon to-morrow to be outa the county," croaked Jack dear,
shifting his Adam's apple rapidly. "And that's real comedy, ain't it, when
your damn county runs clean over to the Utah line, and we can't go back
the way we come, or--and we can't go anywhere till this big slob here puts
our car together. He's got pieces of it strung from here around the block.
Say, what kinda town is this you wished on to us, anyway? Holding night
court, mind you, so they could can us quicker!"

The show lady must have seen how dazed Casey looked. "Maybe you ain't
heard the horrible deal they handed us, Mister. They stopped our show
before we'd raised the curtain,--and it was a seventy-five dollar house if
it was a cent!" she wailed. "They had a bill as long as my arm for
license--we couldn't get by with the five-dollar one--and for lights and
hall rent and what-all. There wasn't enough money in the house to pay it!
And they was going to send us to jail! The sheriff acted anything but a
gentleman, Mister, and