scene was saved.  The spectators simply passed it over as a more or less clumsy attempt to portray a vision of a disordered brain.  The string on the sandwich had been passed over certain rigging above the stage that moved the scenery, and on through a little ventilator that came out on the fourth floor, from which point the manipulator had been able to listen to the speeches on the stage and time the drop of the sandwich.  By the time the Thessalonian boys had traced the string to its end the perpetrator of the joke was nowhere to be found.  He had fled as soon as the thing had been lowered.  The scene ended without further calamity.

In the third scene—­the one in the peasant’s hut—­there is a cat on the stage.  The presence of this cat was the signal for further trouble.  In one of the tense passages, where Marie Latour is pleading with the son of the peasant to flee for his life before the agents of her father come and capture them both, and the cat lies asleep on the hearth, there was a sudden uproar, and a dog bounded through the entrance of the stage.  The cat rushed around in terror and finally ran up the curtain.  The lovers parted hastily and tried to capture the dog, but eluding their pursuit he jumped over the footlights into the orchestra, landing with a crash on the keys of the piano, and then out into the audience.  Nyoda and three or four of the Winnebagos, sitting together near the front on the first floor of the auditorium, recognized the dog with a good deal of surprise.  It was Mr. Bob, Hinpoha’s black cocker spaniel.  How he had gotten in was a mystery, for Hinpoha herself was not there.  Nyoda called to him sharply and he came to her wagging his tail, and allowed himself to be put out with the best nature in the world.  But the scene had been spoiled.

During the rest of the evening Nyoda, as well as a number of the other teachers, sat with brows knitted, going over the various things that had happened to interrupt that play.  As yet they did not know about the attempt to steal the statue, which Sahwah had accidentally nipped in the bud.  But the following week, when the play was all over, and the various occurrences had been made known, there was a day of reckoning at Washington High School.  Joe Lanning and Abraham Goldstein were called up before the principal and confronted with Sahwah, who told, to their infinite amazement, every move they had made in carrying off the statue.  At first they denied everything as a made-up story gotten up to spite them, but when Sahwah led the way to the barn where she had been confined and triumphantly produced the base of the statue, they saw that further denial was useless and admitted their guilt.  They also confessed to being the authors of the sandwich joke and the ones who had brought in the dog.  Both were expelled from school.