"That's what I said,--the insurance men. Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, we all know one side of what it is to insure ourselves, but now the Lord in his infinite wrath has mercifully seen fit to show us the other side. The Assyrian pouncing down on the wolf in his fold is a young mother wrapping up her first baby to look out the window compared to those insurance men. They descended on us bright and shining to-day, and if we was murderers with our families buried under the kitchen floor, we couldn't be looked on with more suspicion. I was far from pleased when I first laid eyes on 'em, for there's a foxiness in any city man as comes to settle things in the country as is far from being either soothing or syrupy to him as lives in the country; but you can maybe imagine my feelings when they very plainly informed me as I couldn't put the roof back on Mrs. Macy's house till it was settled whether it was a cyclone or a tornado--" "Settled--whether--" cried Mrs. Lathrop. "Cyclone or tornado," repeated Susan. "The first thing isn't to get to rights, but it is to settle whether we've got any rights to get. I never dreamed what it was to be injured--no, or no one else neither. Seems if it's a tornado, we don't get a cent of our insurance. And to think it all depends on Mrs. Macy." "On Mrs.--" cried Gran'ma Mullins. "Yes, because she's the only one as really knows whether she was carried off or not. Well, all I can say is, if she don't come back pretty quick, we're going to have a little John Brown raid right here in town; we--" "But what--?" "I'm telling you. It'll be the town rising up against the insurance men, and the insurance men will soon find that when it comes to dilly-dallying with folks newly cycloned upside down, it's life and death if you don't deal fair. What with chimneys down and roofs turned up at the corner like the inquiring angels didn't have time to take the cover all off but just pried up a little to see what was inside,--I say with all this and everything wet and Mrs. Macy gone, this community was in no mood to be sealed up--" "Sealed up!" cried Mrs. Lathrop and Gran'ma Mullins together. "That's what it is. Sealed up we are, and sealed up we've got to stay until Mrs. Macy gets back--" "But--" cried Gran'ma Mullins.