Great cheering followed this announcement from all but me.  Here I had shut myself up in this humbug hall, for Heaven knew how long, on the most important day of my life.  I would have given up willingly my cyclopaedia and my chance at the “profits,” for the certainty of seeing Fausta at five o’clock.  If I did not see her then, what might befall her, and when might I see her again.  An hour before this certainty was my own, now it was only mine by my liberating myself from this prison.  Still I was encouraged by seeing that everything was conducted like clock-work.  From literally a hundred stations they were distributing the books.  We formed ourselves into queues as we pleased, drew our numbers, and then presented ourselves at the bureaux, ordered our magazines, and took our cyclopaedias.  It would be done, at that rate, by half past four.  An omnibus might bring me to the Park, and a Bowery car do the rest in time.  After a vain discussion for the right of exit with one or two of the attendants, I abandoned myself to this hope, and began studying my cyclopaedia.

It was sufficiently amusing to see ten thousand people resign themselves to the same task, and affect to be unconcerned about the green and red figures which were to divide the “profits.”  I tried to make out who were as anxious to get out of that tawdry den as I was.  Four o’clock struck, and the distribution was not done.  I began to be very impatient.  What if Fausta fell into trouble?  I knew, or hoped I knew, that she would struggle to the Astor Library, as to her only place of rescue and refuge,—­her asylum.  What if I failed her there?  I who had pretended to be her protector!  “Protector, indeed!” she would say, if she knew I was at a theatre witnessing the greatest folly of the age.  And if I did not meet her to-day, when should I meet her?  If she found her aunt, how should I find her?  If she did not find her,—­good God? that was worse,—­where might she not be before twelve hours were over?  Then the fatal trunk!  I had told the police agent he might send it to the St. Nicholas, because I had to give him some address.  But Fausta did not know this, and the St. Nicholas people knew nothing of us.  I grew more and more excited, and when at last my next neighbor told me that it was half past four, I rose and insisted on leaving my seat.  Two ushers with blue sashes almost held me down; they showed me the whole assembly sinking into quiet.  In fact, at that moment Mr. Burrham was begging every one to be seated.  I would not be seated.  I would go to the door.  I would go out.  “Go, if you please!” said the usher next it, contemptuously.  And I looked, and there was no handle!  Yet this was not a dream.  It is the way they arrange the doors in halls where they choose to keep people in their places.  I could have collared that grinning blue sash.  I did tell him I would wring his precious neck for him, if he did not let me out.  I said I would sue him for false imprisonment; I would have a writ of habeas corpus.