The Old Gag awoke from his reverie, and started to his feet with something of the old-time fire flashing in his eye. Throwing aside his heavy ulster, he staggered to the entrance and stood there patiently waiting for his cue.
“You’re hardly strong enough to go on to-night,” said a Merry Jest, touching him kindly on the arm; but the gray-bearded one shook him off, saying hoarsely:
“Let be! let be! I must read those old lines once more—it may be for the last time.”
And now a solemn hush fell upon the vast audience as a sad-faced minstrel uttered in tear-compelling accents the most pathetic words in all the literature of minstrelsy:
“And so you say, Mr. Johnson, that all the people on the ship were perishing of hunger, and yet you were eating fried eggs. How do you account for that?”
For one moment a deathlike silence prevailed. Then the Old Gag stepped forward and in clear, ringing tones replied:
“The ship lay to, and I got one.”
A wild, heart-rending sob came from the audience and relieved the tension as the Old Gag staggered back into the entrance and fell into the friendly arms that were waiting to receive him.
Sobbing Conundrums bore him to a couch in the dressing-room. Weeping Jokes strove in vain to bring back the spark of life to his inanimate form. But all to no avail.
The Old Gag was dead.