A Strong Play

''The Defaulter," Lincoln J. Carter's standard production, will be the attraction at the Grand opera house on Monday, Feb. 23. The story is laid in Bngland and Australia. Eobert Halm, a smoutb, desigoing villaio, sooceeeds in gaining the hand of Millicent Little, the village belle, despite the ardent courtship of Christie Bailey and Sir Gordon, the baronet. Halm is the trusted employé of Dixon's Bank, but betrays his trust, secretes valuable seouiities and ruins the baak. He is tiied and sentenced to transportation for life. The blow is a terriable one to the wife, but her former suitors bravely and honorably help her to bear it. Twelve years elapse before she gets word from her nusband in bis Australian prison. He directs her to oome to bim and bring a tin box whose secret eoutents aie the ill-gotten gains of the bank robbery. Mother anda daughter, in the first blush of womaDhood are nnited with the father, whom they still believe to be innooent. Halrn directs his wife to establish herself in a lnxurious mansion and ask the prison authorities to perrnit ber the use of two nonvict servante. Bj her request, her busband and his aooomplice, Stephen Craddook, are assignned to her as a butler and ooachman. The men use the bank's funds in leading a riotous life Craddock asks tbe hand of his partner's daughter Halm yields to his friend, but Millicent spurns the idea of a convict husabnd for her daughter. A quarrel follows and Robert strikes his wife and oonfesses bimself the thief. The woman's oourage rises, her abiding love of years being blighted in an in stant, and the play climaxes when tbe wife turns on her husband and says: " You are my oonviot servant; I discharge yon." The ingrate husband goes back to his drudgery in tbe mines. Mr. Carter has secured an excellent cast for "The Defaulter," and the play is set with rioh and appropriate sceneiy.