all pieces into some fractures of
the upper table of a Stradivari. Having been told to do them neatly,
cleanly and with every precaution, experience and deft handling of
tools, he has got these latter into nice cutting order. The finest and
even semi-transparent shavings will have to come from the fractures
and the portions of wood to be inserted therein. James has by this time
acquired considerable neatness in the treatment of "delicate jobs,"
as he calls such as the present. His tools have had special attention
in the keenness of their edge and he thinks that when all is finished
the violin will be as good as new, and very little of the damage done
while in charge of the owner will be perceptible unless hunted for.
He argues within himself that the greatest amount of expenditure of
muscle work and fitting together of ever so many parts has been done
by himself, and therefore the honour ought to be principally his, in
fact the fiddle is more of his make than that of old Strad. His
ruminations are stopped rather suddenly by the voice of the chief, who
calls out, "I say, James, what about the re-barring of the Maggini that
Miss Winks left a week back?"

"Well, sir, she called again yesterday, and said she didn't think it
would be done, because we seemed slow people, but intended to call again
in three days."

"Perhaps you had better set to work, James. Have you got everything
ready for placing the bar?"

"Yes, sir, everything except the bar itself, which is not cut to shape
yet."

"Well, let me see it. Is it of nice straight grain and from the stock
of that old Italian?"

"Yes, I've picked out a piece that appears to me just the thing; it
only wants the curve cutting to fit the upper table, and that is quite
clean and regular without any slips of the tool in cutting the old one
out, which I think was the original one."

The chief gives two or three glances over the work, his accustomed eye
being ready to catch any little fault likely to have been made by his
man.

"That surface, James, for a Maggini, is remarkably even; as often as
not the gouge marks are left, making a close fit of the bar an
impossibility, let me see the bar."

The piece of wood is produced; the Maggini being a full fourteen inches
in length of body, the proposed bar is cut to ten and a half inches
in length and seems to the chief to be satisfactory.

"You can now go on, James; let me see the bar before you glue it in."

The upper table o