Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/56

 ering above a lakelet in which ripples sparkle and fish are leaping. At length, however, stage attention does center on Ursus, when the man enacting St. Peter, struck by the nature-man's appearance of gigantic strength, observes:

"Thou art strong, my son?"

The rugged human statue moved. In a voice that was low at first but broke quickly into reverberating tones which filled the theater to the rafters, the answer came:

"Holy Father! I can break iron like wood!"

As the speech was delivered, the eye of Ursus gleamed, the folded arms unbent, and one mighty muscle flexed the forearm through a short but significant arc, after which the figure resumed its pose of respectful but impressive immobility.

In that single speech and gesture Hampstead had achieved a personal success and keyed the play as plausible, for by it he had come to birth before a theater-full as a character equal to the prodigious feats of strength upon which the action turned.

"Go to the stable, Ursus!" commanded an authoritative voice.

The huge head of the hairy man, with its crown of long, wild locks was inclined humbly, and with an odd, rolling stride suggestive of enormous animal-like strength, he swung deliberately across the scene and out of it.

Robert Mitchell, staring fixedly, suddenly nodded his head with satisfaction. At last, in that careening walk, he had seen something that he recognized. That was the walk of Hampstead; but now Mitchell recalled it was long since he had seen that gait, long since he had heard the office door reverberate from a bang of one of those hip joints, long since the big man had made any conspicuous exhibition of the physical awkwardness that