"Good people, let me pass--I am Sarah Siddons." The crowd divided instantaneously, and in moving set up a cheer that must have rang through all the town.

There was a minute's pause, while she bowed and smiled--such a smile!--and then the sedan curtain closed.
"Now's the time--only hold fast to me!" whispered John, as he sprang forward, dragging me after him.

In another second he had caught up the pole dropped by the man who was hurt; and before I well knew what we were about we both stood safe inside the entrance of the theatre.
Mrs.Siddons stepped out, and turned to pay her bearers--a most simple action--but so elevated in the doing that even it, I thought, could not bring her to the level of common humanity.

The tall, cloaked, and hooded figure, and the tones that issued thence, made her, even in that narrow passage, under the one flaring tallow-candle, a veritable Queen of tragedy--at least so she seemed to us two.
The one man was paid--over-paid, apparently, from his thankfulness--and she turned to John Halifax.
"I regret, young man, that you should have had so much trouble.

Here is some requital." He took the money, selected from it one silver coin, and returned the rest.
"I will keep this, madam, if you please, as a memento that I once had the honour of being useful to Mrs.Siddons." She looked at him keenly, out of her wonderful dark eyes, then curtsied with grave dignity--"I thank you, sir," she said, and passed on.
A few minutes after some underling of the theatre found us out and brought us, "by Mrs.Siddons' desire," to the best places the house could afford.
It was a glorious night.