“It's that construction camp down below town burning up,” he answered between pants. “How did it get started?” “It didn't get started--somebody started it. Gentlemen, there's trouble beginning down yonder. Where's Judge Priest?... Oh, yes, there he is!” He made for Judge Priest where the judge still stood on the little platform, and all the rest trailed behind him, scrouging up to form a close circle about those two, with hands stirruped behind faulty ears and necks craned forward to hear what Mr. Milam had to say. His story wasn't long, the blurting way he told it, but it carried an abundant thrill. Acting apparently in concert with others, divers unknown persons, creeping up behind the barracks of the construction crew, had fired the building and fled safely away without being detected by its dwellers or by the half-frozen watchers of the police force on the hillock above. At least that was the presumption in Mr. Milam's mind, based on what he had just heard. The fire, spreading fast, had driven the Sicilians forth, and they were now massed under the bluff with their weapons. The police force--eight men, all told, constituted the night shift--hesitated to act, inasmuch as the site of the burning camp lay fifty yards over the town line, outside of town limits. The fire department was helpless. Notice had been served at both the engine houses, in the first moment of the alarm, that if the firemen unreeled so much as a single foot of hose it would be cut with knives--a vain threat, since all the water plugs were frozen up hard and fast anyhow. The sheriff and his only able-bodied deputy were in Hopkinsburg, eighty miles away; and an armed mob of hundreds was reported as being on the way from its rendezvous in the abandoned plough factory to attack the foreigners. Mr. Milam, essentially a man of peace, had learned these things at first hand, or at second, and had hastened hotfoot to Kamleiter's Hall for the one man to whom, in times of emergency, he always looked--his circuit-court judge. He didn't know what Judge Priest could do or would do in the face of a situation so grave; but at least he had done his duty--he had borne the word. In a dozen hasty gulping sentences he told his tale and finished it; and then, by way of final punctuation, a chorus of exclamatory sounds--whistled, grunted and wheezed--rose from his auditors.