Excerpt does not display on slide

I’m trying to display excerpts on my slides as suggested by Josh here.

I’ve edited the functions file (in my child theme which uses the commercial Deadline theme as a parent).

The excerpt field has appeared on the New Slide page, and the database now has an entry that survives the plugin de-activation.

I’ve implemented a custom slideshow template that uses the following code:

<p class=”mslide-title”><?php the_title(); ?></p>
<p class=”mslide-excerpt”><?php the_excerpt(); ?></p>
</div><!– .mslide –>

But while the HTML output has the image and the title displayed correctly, there is no excerpt – like so:

IMAGE
<p class=”mslide-title”>Slide Title Text</p>
<p class=”mslide-excerpt”></p>
</div><!– .mslide –>

I’ve tried the plugin method of enabling excerpts, with the same result.

I’m testing it in a draft Post for now, but I plan to shift the code into a template when it’s working.

Can anyone offer me a clue why this isn’t working?

http://ww.wp.xz.cn/extend/plugins/meteor-slides/