sedative. Hardly had his nerves ceased to quiver sufficiently to allow
him to begin to enjoy the performance, when, in the interval between
two of the turns, a man rose in one of the side boxes.

"Is there a doctor in the house?"

There was a hush in the audience. All eyes were directed toward the
box. A man in the stalls rose, blushing, and cleared his throat.

"My wife has fainted," continued the speaker. "She has just discovered
that she has lost her copy of 'Squibs.'"

The audience received the statement with the bovine stolidity of an
English audience in the presence of the unusual.

Not so Roland. Even as the purposeful-looking chuckers-out wended their
leopard-like steps toward the box, he was rushing out into the street.

As he stood cooling his indignation in the pleasant breeze which had
sprung up, he was aware of a dense crowd proceeding toward him. It was
headed by an individual who shone out against the drab background like
a good deed in a naughty world. Nature hath framed strange fellows in
her time, and this was one of the strangest that Roland's bulging eyes
had ever rested upon. He was a large, stout man, comfortably clad in a
suit of white linen, relieved by a scarlet 'Squibs' across the bosom.
His top-hat, at least four sizes larger than any top-hat worn out of a
pantomime, flaunted the same word in letters of flame. His umbrella,
which, tho the weather was fine, he carried open above his head, bore
the device "One penny weekly".