s, 'cause it's awful dull nowadays in my business, Seth."

"Then I can't guess why you got so dreadful silly when I said I was
goin' into the Department some day."

"It would make anybody laugh, Seth, to hear a feller no bigger'n you
talk of such things. You must be a man to get that kind of a job."

"Well, shan't I be in time--and not such a terrible long while either?
I'm fourteen now, leastways, that's the way I figger it out, an' if I
could get one of them early spring moustaches like Sim Jepson is
raisin', folks would think I was a man when I wasn't only eighteen.
Don't you reckon all the firemen were boys once?"

"Yes," Dan replied doubtfully, "I s'pose they was," and he added quickly
as a sudden thought occurred to him, "but they had to know a good deal
about the business before they could get a job."

"Course they did, an' it was a case of learnin'. That's jest what I'm
doin' when I tend out on fires. I'm gettin' posted, an' by an' by when
I'm old enough you'll see me in the Department, that's all there is
about it."

Seth Bartlett and Dan Roberts were old friends, having made each other's
acquaintance no less than three months previous, when the former, who
had disagreed with Jip Collins on a matter regarding household affairs,
was in search of a new roommate.

Seth owned, or believed he did, certain rights in a small shed situate
in the rear of Baxter Brothers' carpenter shop, where he made his home.

It was a rude affair, originally built for the purpose of sheltering Mr.
Baxter's horse and carriage, but afterward used as a storage place for
such odds and ends as accumulate in a carpenter's work-shop.

Seth had made his home in this shed for nearly a year, having been given
permission to sleep there by one of the owners on a certain cold, stormy
night, and he was not averse to telling his friends how he "worked the
snap."

This is his version of what may perhaps be called a business
transaction:

"I did start in to live with Jim Wardwell's folks. You see, business was
mighty good for a spell, an' I got to feelin' way up toney where nothin'
short of a reg'lar room would do me. I paid a dollar a week jest for
sleepin' there. Ten big, round plunks for ten weeks, an' then I tumbled
to myself! You see, it was too rich for my blood when there come a long
spell of bad weather, an' I wasn't takin' in more'n twenty-five cents a
day, so I snooped 'round to see if I couldn't find somethin' that would
be che