said the boy, sympathetically,
as he put a hand upon Strings's broad shoulder and looked admiringly up
into his face.

"I wish so myself," replied the fiddler. "Thrice a day, I grow lonesome
here." A weather-beaten hand indicated the spot where good dinners
should be.

"They haven't all forgot you, Strings," continued his companion,
consolingly.

"Right, lad!" said Strings, musingly, as he lifted the old viol close
against his cheek and tenderly picked it. "The old fiddle is true to me
yet, though there is but one string left to its dear old neck." There
was a sob in his voice as he spoke. "I tell you, a fiddle's human, Dick!
It laughs at my jokes alone now; it weeps at my sorrows." He sighed
deeply and the tears glistened in his eyes. "The fiddle is the only
friend left me and the little ones at home now, my lad."

"--And Dick!" the boy suggested, somewhat hurt. He too was weeping.
"It's a shame; that's what it is!" he broke out, indignantly. "Tompkins
can't play the music like you used to, Strings."

"Oons!" exclaimed the fiddler, the humour in his nature bubbling again
to the surface. "It's only now and then the Lord has time to make a
fiddler, Dickey, my boy."

As he spoke, the greenroom shook with the rounds of applause from the
pit and galleries without.

"Hurrah!" he shouted, following Dick to the stage-door--his own sorrows
melting before the sunshine of his joy at the success of his favourite.
"Nell has caught them with the epilogue." He danced gleefully about,
entering heartily into the applause and totally forgetful of the fact
that he was on dangerous ground.

Dick was more watchful. "Manager Hart's coming!" he exclaimed in
startled voice, fearful for the welfare of his friend.

Strings collapsed. "Oh, Lord, let me be gone," he said, as he remembered
the bitter quarrel he had had with the manager of the King's House,
which ended in the employment of Tompkins. He did not yearn for another
interview; for Hart had forbidden him the theatre on pain of whipping.

"Where can you hide?" whispered Dick, woefully, as the manager's voice
indicated that he was approaching the greenroom, and that too in far
from the best of humour.

"Behind Richard's throne-chair! It has held sinners before now," added
the fiddler as he glided well out of sight.

Dick was more cautious. In a twinkling, he was out of the door which led
to the street.

The greenroom walls looked grim in the sputtering candle-light, but th