“Seems like I didn’t quite pay for them lathes, and along comes a feller with a chattel mortgage. I clean forgot about it. No sooner does he come along, bringin’ a deputy sheriff with him, than another man rushes in and claims our dowel-machine because the feller I bought it off of hadn’t ever paid for it, and he fetched along another deputy sheriff. Mill’s plumb full of sheriffs a-settin’ onto machinery.” “How much?” says Mark, without winking an eye. I was in a regular panic, but not him. You would have thought he expected to hear something like this and was ready for it. “One man wants two hunderd and eighty, the other says he’s got a hunderd and seventy-three comin’.” “That m-makes four hunderd and f-f-fifty-three dollars,” says Mark. “And that hain’t all. The factory inspector’s there, and he says we can’t run another day till we build outside fire-escapes from the second and third floors made out of iron. Hain’t got no idee _what_ that’ll cost, but plenty.” “Um!... That all?” “Hain’t it enough?” “Suits me,” says Mark, “but b-b-before I start to work cleanin’ it up I want to be sure it’s all out. I don’t want nothin’ else p-poppin’ up when this is done.” “You goin’ to try to fix this up?” says Silas, looking as astonished as if an angle-worm had looked up in his face and invited him to dinner. “Hain’t g-goin’ to _try_,” says Mark. “I’m goin’ to d-do it.” “Well,” says Silas, “I guess that’s about all. I can’t think of nothin’ else.” “Thank goodness for that,” says I. “P-probably take clost to a thousand dollars,” says Mark, mentioning a thousand dollars as if all he had to do was to reach into his pants pocket and haul it out. “The sheriffs say they’re goin’ to take that machinery out of here in twenty-four hours.” “Twenty-four hours, eh? Well, that’s quite a while, hain’t it? A f-feller kin do quite a lot in twenty-four hours if he hustles.... Now, Silas, you sit still on that log and enjoy bein’ m-m-miserable. That’s all I ask of you. Don’t do anythin’, because if you do you’ll git us into more t-trouble. Jest sit and think. Don’t talk to nobody and don’t sign anythin’ and don’t do anythin’. Us fellers’ll hustle around.” “All right,” says Silas, “but it hain’t no use.” “If you git p-pleasure out of thinkin’ so,” says Mark, “why, go ahead. I feel d-different.” Mark started to walk off, and we followed him. “Where you goin’?” says I. “See a lawyer,” says he. “What for?” “Find out about them f-fire-escapes.” Well, we went to a lawyer and told him, and he says the law wasn’t made to apply to cases such as ours, but that a factory inspector that was mean and crooked might make it twist around so as to make us trouble. He says that, anyhow, the factory inspector could shut us down for a spell till we fought it out, and fighting it out would be expensive.