them out of houses that are on fire. There aren't hardly any corded
beds now, of course, but it's a very old association that you're
foreman of, and the members keep the old things. It's awfully nice
to do so, I think. It's like keeping the furniture in old families.
And that big bag there, with the puckerin'-string run around it, is
the bag to put china and valuables into and lug away."

"And your idee of an honor, is it," he sneered, "is that I'm goin'
to put that dingbusset with a leather back-fin onto my head and grab
up them two leather swill-pails and stick that iron thing there under
my arm and grab that puckering-string bag in my teeth and start
tophet-te-larrup over this town a-chasin' fires? Say--" but his
voice choked, and he began to read once more the pamphlet. The red
on the back of his neck grew deeper.

At last the explosion occurred.

"Louada Murilla Sproul, do you mean to say that you've had this thing
in your fam'ly once, and was knowin' what it meant, and then let them
three Shanghaiers come in here and shove this bloodsucker bus'ness
onto me, and git away all safe and sound? I had been thinkin' that
your Todds and Wards was spreadin' some sail for villuns, but they're
only moskeeters to Barb'ry pirates compared with this."

He cuffed his hand against the open pages of the pamphlet.

"It says here that the foreman has to set up a free dinner for 'em
four times a year and ev'ry holiday. It says that the foreman is fined
two dollars for ev'ry monthly meetin' that he misses, other members
ten cents. He's fined ten dollars for ev'ry fire that he isn't at,