Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/121

 "What star's this?" shrieked a voice on one side the gallery.

"No star at all. It's a comet!" bawled a man from the other side, cupping his hands to carry his second-hand wit around the auditorium.

The Spanish War was not then so far back in memory that the sight of the uniform did not speedily kindle a little popular wrath upon its own account, and the demonstration began again and rose higher, but Hampstead became neither flustered nor angry. He maintained his character and his dignity. He remembered his speeches, and delivered them in stentorian tones that sounded vibrantly above the general clamor. When the gallery discovered to its surprise that here was a voice it could not entirely drown, it stopped out of sheer curiosity to see what the voice was like and found it as attractive as it was forceful. Moreover, there was a kind of special appeal in it. It was the voice of a real man; if they had only known it,—of a man at bay. He was not Colonel Delaro, plotting against the liberty and affections of a lady. He was John Hampstead, fighting,—with his back to the wall,—fighting for his opportunity, for an accredited position in this poor, cheap misfit company,—a position which seemed to him just now the most desired thing in all the world. Furthermore, he was fighting to justify his own faith in himself and the faith of Dick and Tayna; yes, and the faith of Bessie.

Hampstead was, moreover, used to rough houses. He had faced them more than once on his own barn-storming one-night appearances.

The way to get an audience like this he knew was to play it like a fish, to get the first nibble of interest and then hold it motionless with the lure of some kind of dramatic story. The situation called for a skilled, dramatic raconteur, and in truth that was what Hamp-