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An event happened.
The Tadcaster Inn became more and more a furnace of joy and laughter.
Never was there more resonant gaiety. The landlord and his boy were
become insufficient to draw the ale, stout, and porter. In the evening
in the lower room, with its windows all aglow, there was not a vacant
table. They sang, they shouted; the great old hearth, vaulted like an
oven, with its iron bars piled with coals, shone out brightly. It was
like a house of fire and noise.
In the yard--that is to say, in the theatre--the crowd was greater
still.
Crowds as great as the suburb of Southwark could supply so thronged the
performances of "Chaos Vanquished" that directly the curtain was
raised--that is to say, the platform of the Green Box was lowered--every
place was filled. The windows were alive with spectators, the balcony
was crammed. Not a single paving-stone in the paved yard was to be seen.
It seemed paved with faces.
Only the compartment for the nobility remained empty.
There was thus a space in the centre of the balcony, a black hole,
called in metaphorical slang, an oven. No one there. Crowds everywhere
except in that one spot.
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