e, DAVID FRASER," replied the foreman, "we all guess who you
are. You have had your week's joke out; and now, I suppose, we must give
you your week's wages, and let you go away!"

"Yes," said David, "work waits for me in Glasgow; but I just thought it
might be well to know how you hewed on this east side of the country."

BILL BROWN'S TEST

BY CLEVELAND MOFFETT

All firemen have courage, but it cannot be known until the test how many
have this particular kind,--Bill Brown's kind.

What happened was this: Engine 29, pumping and pounding her prettiest,
stood at the northwest corner of Greenwich and Warren streets, so close
to the blazing drug-house that Driver Marks thought it wasn't safe there
for the three horses, and led them away. That was fortunate, but it left
Brown alone, right against the cheek of the fire, watching his boiler,
stoking in coal, keeping his steam-gauge at 75. As the fire gained,
chunks of red-hot sandstone began to smash down on the engine. Brown ran
his pressure up to 80, and watched the door anxiously where the boys had
gone in.

Then the explosion came, and a blue flame, wide as a house, curled its
tongues halfway across the street, enwrapping engine and man, setting
fire to the elevated railway station overhead, or such wreck of it as
the shock had left.

Bill Brown stood by his engine, with a wall of fire before him and a
sheet of fire above him. He heard quick footsteps on the pavements, and
voices, that grew fainter and fainter, crying, "Run for your lives!"
He heard the hose-wagon horses somewhere back in the smoke go plunging
away, mad with fright and their burns. He was alone with the fire, and
the skin was hanging in shreds on his hands, face, and neck. Only a
fireman knows how one blast of flame can shrivel up a man, and the pain
over the bared surfaces was,--well, there is no pain worse than that of
fire scorching in upon the quick flesh seared by fire.

Here, I think, was a crisis to make a very brave man quail. Bill Brown
knew perfectly well why every one was running; there was going to be
another explosion in a couple of minutes, maybe sooner, out of this hell
in front of him. And the order had come for every man to save himself,
and every man had done it except the lads inside. And the question was,
Should he run or should he stay and die? It was tolerably certain that
he would die if he stayed. On the other hand, the boys of old 29 were
in there. Devanny and McArthu