COMIC CONVICT. "SILAS GARRETT, the man who stole the money which ARNOLD
was thought to have stolen. Police, do your duty." (_The police--not
being the real thing, but only supes in police uniform--do their duty
and arrest_ WILLOUGHBY.) _Somebody remarks that_ ARNOLD _is_ NOT GUILTY.
COMIC CONVICT _receives a full pardon, and a matrimonial mania seizes
upon everybody. About this time it occurs to the stage manager that the
play might as well end. Accordingly it ends_.

_Everybody in the Audience_. "I don't begin to see into the plot yet,
but if some one would explain why Mrs. ARMITAGE became a fashionable
lady with a fondness for looking at convicts; why SILAS became a Warden
and afterwards went to India; why ARNOLD passed himself off upon his
regiment as an officer, merely because he had stolen a private's
clothes; why everybody, whether free or in prison, dead or alive, went
to the Quarries, to India, and back again to WILLOUGHBY'S country-seat
with unfailing unanimity; why, in short, things were as WATTS PHILLIPS
assures us that they were, I might begin to have some idea of what the
play is about."

But then--the undersigned would respectfully ask--what would one gain by
understanding the play? He would find it noisy and tedious, even if it
were intelligible. The admirable acting of Messrs. OWEN FAWCETT and F.F.
MACKAY, in the slight and subordinate parts allotted to them, would
still be overshadowed by the melodramatic absurdity of Mr. WALCOT. Miss
IRENE GAY could not look prettier than she does, nor could Mrs. WALCOT
be more thoroughly pleasing; but the drums would be just as intolerable,
were the plot as plain as a strong-minded woman. And then, after all,
there are many reasons why WATTS PHILLIPS, when unintelligible, is
decidedly preferable to WATTS PHILLIPS when made plain to the weakest
intellect.