“This is positively the worst production I’ve ever been in!” complained Mr. Hadley to Blake.  “Did you ever see such a farce as when the Confederates were hidden in the orchard and the Unionists stormed over the stone wall?  You’d think they were a lot of boys going after apples.  Bah!  It makes me weary!”

“It isn’t very realistic,” admitted Blake.

“Mr. Ringold’s talking to them now like a Dutch uncle,” observed Joe, as he idly swung the crank of his camera, the machine not being in gear.

“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.’  By the way,” he went on to Joe and Blake, “don’t you two young gentlemen make any long-time engagements for the next week.”

“Why?” asked Blake.

“Well, I may have a proposition to submit to you, if all goes well.  I’ll talk about it when I get this battle scene off my mind.  Now, then, Jake, how about you?”

“I think it will be all right, Mr. Hadley.  I have talked to my extra actors, and they promise to put more verve and spirit into their work.”

“Verve and spirit!” cried the producer.  “What I want is action!”

“Well, that’s the same thing,” said the manager.  “I’ve told them they must really get into the spirit of the fight.  I think if you try them again——­”

“I will!  Now, then, men—­you who are acting as the Confederates—­you take your places in and around the farmhouse.  You’re supposed to have taken refuge there after escaping from a party of Unionists.  You fortify the place, post your sentries and are having a merry time of it—­comparatively merry, that is, for you’re eating after being without food for a long time.