And now the burgomaster, bribed, had reason to adjudge him insane.

And Iistral was dragged off, wailing, to the asylum.

* * * * *

With my clothes in literal rags I went through the rehearsals, attended classes, kept up my athletics....

Often I woke up in the night, crying out, with tears rolling down my cheeks, the lines of unhappy Iistral ... the spirit-woman Egeria grew real as flesh and blood to me....

“Egeria!  Egeria!—­”

I woke, time and again, and heard my own voice, like the voice of another, calling her name in the dark.

* * * * *

“You mustn’t take the play so desperately ... remember it’s just a play ... you rehearse as if the whole thing were a part of your life.”

“Some of the boys,” I replied, “some of the football boys lost ten or twelve pounds in our Thanksgiving game at Kansas City last fall ... why do you rebuke me for taking art and beauty as seriously as athletes take a football match?”

* * * * *

Two days before the play, as I was walking by the Bellman House, I saw Jarvis Alexander Mackworth standing there, come up from Osageville for a regents’ conference....

“Hello!” the dear, good man called, “you heavenly bum!  You starry young tramp!”

His eyes were twinkling in appreciative merriment over his quaint phraseology.

“What are you doing in Laurel, Mr. Mackworth?”

I noticed that he did not wear his many-patched trousers, but was well dressed....

—­“attending a regents’ meeting, young man,—­where I suppose I’ll have to stand up in your defence again....

“It’s a good thing you don’t run after the women, Gregory, or your case would be entirely lost.”

(Yet Mackworth didn’t know of the dirty trick that had been played on me: 

One of the boys from the school, running wild down in Kansas City, had, with a curious sense of humour, given my name as his ... to the “girls” in various houses of prostitution....

And “do you know Johnnie Gregory?” and “when is Johnnie Gregory coming to see us again?” other students were asked who frequented the “houses.”)

“And what are you up to now?” asked Mackworth.

—­“acting ... in Van Maarden’s Iistral ... leading role!”

“You look skinnier than ever!”

“I am taking the part seriously, and it’s bringing me down.  I like to do real things when I get a chance, Mr. Mackworth ... and I am going to make the two performances of Iistral memorable ones.”

“You need a new suit of clothes very badly.”

“I know I do.  But I have no money, and no credit.”

“Well see about that, my young Villon.”

Mackworth took me to one side and thrust a fifty-dollar bill into my hand.

I hurried down to Locker, the clothier....