s Sally's.

"I'm glad he's dead," he said. "I don't know anybody I'd sooner have it
happen to."

"Don't say that!" exclaimed Eliph'. "If you only knew how he died, poor
young man, you wouldn't say it. He burned to death."

"Well," said the butcher, "I don't know as I care how he died. I can't
say I'm sorry. I guess he cost me a hundred dollars. I've got to go to
law for it if I ever want to see it again. I guess he deserved to die,
for the trouble he has made in this town."

Eliph' placed his hand on the sample copy of Jarby's.

"I will tell you how he died," he said briskly.

"No, you won't," said Skinner angrily, waving his hand toward the door;
"you won't tell me nothin'. I've heard of these stories of yours, I
have. You want to sell me one of them books, and you'll talk away at me
about this Rossiter feller, and the first thing I know you'll have me
down for a book. But you won't, for if you don't get right out of that
door I'm goin' to put you out."

"All right," said Eliph' cheerfully, picking up his book, "if that's the
way you feel about it I won't take up your time telling you about it I
won't take up your time telling you about Bill Rossiter. Only I thought
you'd like to know how it happened he was burned up in a theater when
there was two dozen as good fire-extinguishers, right at hand, as there
is in the world. But I won't intrude. I know myself too well, and I know
I might happen to get to talking books before I thought. You see," he
said, as if apologizing for himself, "I can't forget how this book saved
my life, and might have saved the life of Bill Rossiter, too, if he
had had a copy, the price being only five dollars, bound in cloth, one
dollar down and one dollar a month until paid."

"There," said Skinner, as if Eliph' had offended him, "you are talkin'
books right now, like I said you would."

"Was I?" asked Eliph'. "And all I started out to say was that I met Bill
Rossiter in St. Louis just after he had run away from here. He told me
all about it, and wept on my shoulder as he told me how it pained him to
have to skip that way. He said it wasn't as if he could have left Miss
Briggs anything that she could use, but-lung-testers! He asked me what
a town like Kilo could do with lung-testers, and he felt awful about it.
Said he couldn't bear to look at a lung-tester any more, they made him
feel so ashamed, and what made it all the worse was that he had to look
at them all day."

"I should th