lic because the lady had a fortune of two hundred thousand
dollars, and that amount of money would be useful to an ambitious man in
the growing West. It would, as Gow Johnson said, "Let him sit back and
view the landscape o'er, before he puts his ploughshare in the mud."

There was an outdoor scene in the play produced by the impetuous
amateurs, and dialogue had been interpolated by three "imps of fame" at
the suggestion of Constantine Jopp, one of the three, who bore malice
towards O'Ryan, though this his colleagues did not know distinctly. The
scene was a camp-fire--a starlit night, a colloquy between the three,
upon which the hero of the drama, played by Terry O'Ryan, should break,
after having, unknown to them, but in sight of the audience, overheard
their kind of intentions towards himself.

The night came. When the curtain rose for the third act there was
exposed a star-sown sky, in which the galaxy of Orion was shown with
distinctness, each star sharply twinkling from the electric power
behind-a pretty scene evoking great applause. O'Ryan had never seen this
back curtain--they had taken care that he should not--and, standing in
the wings awaiting his cue, he was unprepared for the laughter of the
audience, first low and uncertain, then growing, then insistent, and
now a peal of ungovernable mirth, as one by one they understood the
significance of the stars of Orion on the back curtain.

O'Ryan got his cue, and came on to an outburst of applause which shook
the walls. La Touche rose at him, among them Miss Molly Mackinder in the
front row with the notables.

He did not see the back curtain, or Orion blazing in the ultramarine
blue. According to the stage directions, he was to steal along the trees
at the wings, and listen to the talk of the men at the fire plotting
against him, who were presently to pretend good comradeship to his face.
It was a vigorous melodrama with some touches of true Western feeling.
After listening for a moment, O'Ryan was to creep up the stage again
towards the back curtain, giving a cue for his appearance.

When the hilarious applause at his entrance had somewhat subsided, the
three took up their parable, but it was not the parable of the play.
They used dialogue not in the original. It had a significance which the
audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to turn "The Sunburst
Trail" at this point into a comedy-farce. When this new dialogue began,
O'Ryan could scarcely trust