“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 think they would,” said the butcher heartily. “It makes me sick to see them. But why did he do it if he didn't like it?” “I was just going to tell you that,” said Eliph', putting down his book again. “You see, when he left here he went right to St. Louis, that being where his home was, and that was how he happened to have lung-testers with him when he was here. His father made them. That was his father's business. He was in the lung-tester manufacturing business. So when Bill Rossiter left here he went right home to his father, which was the wise thing to do.” “Went home to sponge on the old man, I suppose,” said Skinner.