"It was one of those very games we played so long ago that he wanted to see me about and wanted me to keep mum about, for some of the folks that he played it on were around here now.

It was a game we got off on one of the big strike partners long before the strike.

I'll tell YOU, dad, for you know what happened afterwards, and you'll be glad.

Well, that partner--Demorest--was a kind of silly, you remember--a sort of Miss Nancyish fellow--always gloomy and lovesick after his girl in the States.

Well, we'd written lots of letters to girls from their chaps before, and got lots of fun out of it; but we had even a better show for a game here, for it happened that Van Loo knew all about the girl--things that even the man's own partners didn't, for Van Loo's mother was a sort of a friend of the girl's family, and traveled about with her, and knew that the girl was spoony over this Demorest, and that they corresponded.