"I wonder how that fire started," was a frequent exclamation. "Don't
know," said every body save one poor, old tobacco-ridden man who confessed
that he had been smoking in the waste room, the place where the fire
started.

"When you see a man shoving a lighted pipe into sich a place." said Simes
Badger to the gossippy circle at Silas Trefethen's store that night, "send
in a bucket of water after him."

"What for? to put out the fire, or to wash him?" asked a hearer.

"Both," said Simes, "one to protect the place and the other to purify
him."

The wise men all laughed, and there was some sense in the laugh that
applauded the oracle.

Tim Tyler and Bob Landers had both been carried to their homes. Bob
escaped serious injury, but it was found that Tim was badly burned.

"I felt it a good deal at the very first," he told Mr. Walton one day,
"when, in going after my coat, I happened to open a door where the fire
was, and it darted at me. You see the pain stopped, but now it has started
up."

"Yes, I understand that while the first contact with the fire is painful,
then what you might call a paralyzing of the nerves takes place, and
feeling is benumbed. When the action of the fire ceases, and the attempt
at healing sets in, the nerves try to do their duty and the pain starts up