Another reel was started.  The projection of it flickered on the screen until it dazzled one’s eyes to try to watch it.

“Goodness!” gasped Pearl Graves.  “I hope that won’t keep up.”

The excited little Hebrew who owned the theatre ran, sputtering, up the aisle, and climbed into the gallery to expostulate with the operator.  There was an explosion of angry voices from the operator’s box when the proprietor reached it.

The reel was halted again—­this time without the projection of the usual “Wait a minute, please,” card.  The next instant there was another explosion; but not of voices.

A glare of greenish flame was projected from the box in the gallery where the machine was located—­then followed a series of crackling, snapping explosions!

It was indeed startling, and there were a general craning of necks and excited whispering in the audience; but it might have gone no further had it not been for Linda Riggs.

It could not have been with malice—­for the result swept Linda herself into the vortex of excitement and peril that followed; but the railroad president’s daughter shrieked at the loudest pitch of her voice: 

“Fire! fire!  We’ll all be burned to death! Fire!”

“Be still!” “Sit down!” were commands that instantly sounded from all parts of the house.

But the mischief was done, and Linda continued to shriek in apparently an abandonment of terror: 

“Fire!  Fire!”

Other nervous people took up the cry.  Nearly half a thousand spectators were seated in the picture theatre and the smell of smoke was in their nostrils and the glare of fire above them.

For something, surely, was burning in the operator’s box.  The danger of the inflammable film was in the minds of all.  A surge of the crowd toward the main exit signaled the first panic.

The outgoing rush was met by those who (not understanding the commotion) had been waiting at the back for seats.  These people would not give way easily as the frightened audience pushed up the main aisle.

Those at the sides escaped more easily, for there was an exit on either side of the audience room.  In the case of Nan Sherwood and her party, however, they were in the worst possible position as far as quick escape went.  By some oversight of the fire inspectors the seats on several front rows had been built close against the sidewalls, with no passage at that end of the rows for entrance or egress.

Bess was next to the wall, and she jumped up, crying:  “Oh, come on, girls! let’s get out.  Walter!  I say, Walter!  I’m frightened.  Let us go.”

Grace was crying.

Nan hugged Inez close to her and looked to Walter, too, to extricate them from their situation.  But Linda had reached across her cousin, Pearl Graves, and clawed at Walter in abject terror.  “Oh, save me! save me, Walter!” she moaned.  “I am so afraid of fire—­and in a place like this!  Oh! oh!”