, but I don't care to," said Cole, shortly.

Since the change which came over the complexion of matters in his
world, Cole was much less assured and less assertive than before. The
receipt this morning of the Salamander's final and largest loss draft
marked the last public connection between that company and the Osgood
office. The Salamander had reinsured, and the news of its fall was
abroad on the streets of Boston as in New York, the insurance talk of
all the towns. O'Connor, temporarily at least, had disappeared, and no
man knew what chasm had swallowed him up. So far as Osgood and Company
were concerned, he and his company were both dead issues; and once more
in the old office in the corner Mr. Osgood could be seen in his wonted
place.

Immediately following the conflagration Mr. Osgood had quietly resumed
his authority as active head of the firm; and the Guardian, having
taken over the Salamander's unburned business, which was in reality its
own, once more acknowledged as its Boston representatives Messrs. Silas
Osgood and Company. Of course the separation rule of the Boston Board
was still nominally in force; but with the legal decision pending there
was no disposition on the part of any agency or of any company to force
an action of any sort. In the face of a matter so great as the
conflagration had been, the smaller things, the lesser animosities,
were allowed to slip peacefully into forgotten limbo. In due time the
separation rule, its chief protagonist discredited and gone none knew
where, would be repealed, either under legal compulsion or without.
When that day came, the Guardian would be back in the position it had
always enjoyed until Mr. O'Connor played--and lost--his meteoric game.

In Mr. Cole's office, meanwhile, the small pile of checks and drafts
was being counted over with scrupulous care by Mr. Wilkinson.

"They seem to be in order," he said. "Three hundred and fifty-five
thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents.
Benny, a thought strikes me! Why should not an insurance broker get a
commission on losses as well as premiums? It seems to me that that is
a very reasonable idea--I wonder it has never occurred to anybody
before."

"You get your commission when the line is rewritten, of course," Cole
responded. "What more do you want?"

"Why, that's so; I hadn't thought of that. I presume that such an
operation will be more or less lucrative--unless my sagacious