The actors scattered from my brandished shovel, just as they would have done in real life ... the directress had schooled them to crowd about me so as to mask the action.
But the action needed no masking. It was real.
The two guards were on me,—boys who, in everyday life, were big football men on the freshman team....
I fought them, frenzied, back and forth over the stage, smashing down the pasteboard hedge, falling ... getting up again....
But, though the scenery went down, the audience did not laugh, but sat spellbound.
I was finally dragged away ... on the way to the asylum, half my costume torn from my body ... and I kept crying aloud ... for mercy ... for deliverance ... after the curtain had long gone down....
"Big Bill" Heizer gave me a thump in the ribs.
"For God's sake, Mr. Gregory" (he had called me "Johnnie" always, before) "it's only play-acting ... it's not real ... quit it ... it gets me."
The audience went wild with applause. I had won Laurel's complete approbation—for the day, as I had won Mt. Hebron's, that fall Field Day, long before!