at, but I like my name for you better. Eh,
boss?"

Once admitted, Peter often availed himself of his membership in the
syndicate. He made a third at their games, turned an attentive ear to the
thriller or added his bit to the enlightenment of the conversation. And
there wasn't a topic from war to feminine-dress reform that they did not
attack and thrash out among them with all the keenness and thoroughness
of three alive and original minds.

"Puts me thinking of the days when I was switch boss at the Cassie Maguire
Mine. Nothing but a shaver then, working up; nothing to do in the
God-forsaken hole, after work, but talk. We just about settled the affairs
of the world and gave the Lord Almighty advice into the bargain." The
mammoth man laughed a mammoth laugh. "And when we'd talked ourselves
inside out we'd have some fiddling--always a fiddle among some of the
boys. Never hear one of those old tunes that it don't take me back to the
Cassie Maguire and the way a fiddle would play the heart back into a
lonely, homesick shaver." He turned with a suspicious sniff to Sheila.
"Come, boss, the chessboard. Peter'n'me are going to have another Verdun
set-to. Only this time he's German. See? And if you don't mind, you might
fill up our pipes and bring us our four-forty bowl."

At one time of the day only did the merriment flag--that was at dusk.
"Don't like it--never did like it," he confessed. "Something about it that
gets onto my chest and turns me gloomy. Don't suppose you ever smelled
the choke-damp, did you? Well, that's the feeling. Say, boss, wouldn't be
a bad plan to shine up that old safety of yours and give us more light in
the old pit. Mother quit about this time o' day, and it seems like I can't
forget it."

The next day the coal magnate took a turn for the worse. The heart
specialist and the house doctor glowered ominously at Sheila as they came
to make their unwelcome rounds, and Sheila hurried them out of the room as
speedily as she could. Then it was that she thought of the fiddlers three.
An out-of-town orchestra played biweekly at the sanitarium. They were
young men, most of them, still apprentices at their art, and she knew they
would be glad enough for extra earnings. They were due that evening, and
she would engage the services of three violins for the dusk hour the old
man dreaded. She did not accomplish this without a protest from the
business office, warnings from the two physicians, and shocked comments