"Yes. We're all here," came from somebody in the rear. "But, oh, do let us get out! I can scarcely breathe!"
"I've lost my hat!" wailed another.
"Oh, never mind your hat, Alice, as long as we get out," came from the girl who was next to Jack.
At last the crowd at the doorway thinned out, and a moment later the four Rovers, pushing the girls ahead of them, managed to get outside. They found themselves in a narrow alleyway, and from this hurried to the street beyond.
"Oh, how glad I am that we are out of there!" exclaimed the girl who had been sitting beside Jack.
"I'm glad myself," he added, wiping away the tears which the smoke had started from his eyes.
"If only they all get out safely!" said one of the other girls.
"I don't know about that," answered Randy, seriously. "It was a bad enough crush at that side door, but I think it was worse at the front doors."
By this time everybody seemed to be out of the theater. An alarm of fire had been sounded, and now a local chemical engine, followed by a hook and ladder company, came rushing to the scene. There was, for fully ten minutes, a good deal of excitement, but this presently died down when it was learned positively that there was no fire outside the metallic booth from which the pictures had been shown and where the small explosion had occurred.
"It wasn't much of an explosion," explained the manager of the theater. "It was more smoke than anything else."