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There was Slim, an unknown quantity, seldom speaking; generally, when we were not at work, conning the advertisement pages in the few magazines that littered a corner of our bunk-car. He figured chiefly as "Hank's partner"; and Hank I leave to the last, dropping in here instead the boss of this steam-shovel outfit—"the steam-shovel engineer." One day a stream of leaflets descended on us from the rear platform of a passing train where sat an advance publicity agent for a piano recital to be given in Vancouver, showering these out when he saw houses or converted box-cars, any indication of inhabitants. We picked up the leaflets, and found that they announced the coming to Vancouver of Paderewski. Opposite a column of names of towns, beginning at Calgary and going west by Golden, Kamloops, Ashcroft, Revelstoke, was a column of figures—the reduced special railway rate for return tickets procurable at these places to hear him play.

The boss considered one of these broadsheets a long time.

"I'm damned if I can understand it!" he said at last. "They tell me he hits the piano for a matter of four hours on end. Imagine going from here to Vancouver, about a coupla hundred miles, to hear a man hit the piano for four hours on end! Now that gets me. If he was playing it with his toes, or anything in the nature of a side-show, I could understand. I once seen a man playing a fiddle behind his back. That was something to look at!"