"Well, I hope it does some good," observed the producer. "If it isn't
better pretty soon, I'll let all these extra men go and hire others
myself. I want that battle scene to look halfway real, at least."

"It'll be a failure, I know it will," observed a melancholy-looking man
who strolled up at this juncture. "I saw a black cat as I came from my
room this morning, and that's always a sign of bad luck."

"Oh, leave it to you to find something wrong!" exploded Mr. Hadley.
"Can't you look on the cheerful side once in a while, C. C.?" he asked,
forgetting that he, himself, had been prophetic of failure but a few
moments before.

"Humph!" murmured C. C., otherwise Christopher Cutler Piper, a comedian
by profession and a gloom-producer by choice, "you might have known
those fellows couldn't act after you'd had one look at 'em," and he
motioned to the mobs of extra men, part of whom formed the Confederate
and the other half the Union armies. "There isn't a man among them who
has ever played Macbeth."

"If they had, and they let it affect them as it does you, I'd fire them
on the spot!" laughed Mr. Hadley; and at this, his first sign of mirth
that day, Blake, Joe and some of the others smiled.

"I don't want actors for this," went on the producer. "I want just plain
fighters--men who can imagine they have something to gain or lose, even
if they are shooting only blank cartridges. Well, I see Jake has
finished telling them where they get off. Now we'll try a rehearsal once
more, and then I'm going to film it whether it's right or not. I've got
other fish to fry, and I can't waste all my time on 'The Dividing Line.'