fore the reader of the Saturday Evening Post as a character he had always known and even always loved. There was assuredly magic in this and Ambrose's present difficulty owed its existence to the fact that he himself had been unaware of this magic.
When he wrote The Stafford Will Case he had employed as material the events surrounding a certain celebrated trial which had come up in the old town court, dividing the village into opposing factions, breaking down ties of friendship and marriage. He re-created the hypocrisy, the meanness, the drama, and the beauty of this sordid trial, reflected through the actions and words of the villagers in their homes, for, unexpectedly in a play with such a title, there was no court-room scene.
On reading the manuscript a prominent manager had at once sensed its stage values and had produced it with a cast and a director who had even augmented its inherent air of reality. The result had surpassed all expectations. Harold Edwards, the manager, had hoped for a modest success of esteem and Ambrose had looked forward to a slight increase in his income. Neither had foreseen the ensuing triumph. The first performance, fortuitously attended by a sympathetic audience, had concluded with so many curtain calls, so many lusty demands for the author, that both
