But in fact there was also an omelet, and bread and butter delicious beyond anything that Lemuel had tasted; and there was a bouquet of pink radishes with fragments of ice dropped among olives, and other facts of a polite breakfast. At the close came a dish of what Bellingham called premature strawberries. “Why! they're actually _sweet_!” said Meredith, “and they're as natural as emery-bags.” “Yes, they're all you say,” said Bellingham. “You can have strawberries any time nowadays after New Year's, if you send far enough for them; but to get them ripe and sound, or distinguishable from small turnips in taste, is another thing.” Lemuel had never imagined a breakfast like that; he wondered at himself for having respected the cuisine of the St. Albans. It seemed to him that he and the person he had been--the farm-boy, the captive of the police, the guest of the Wayfarer's Lodge, the servant of Miss Vane, and the head-waiter at the hotel--could not be the same person. He fell into a strange reverie, while the talk, in which he had shared so little, took a range far beyond him. Then he looked up and found all the others' eyes upon him, and heard Bellingham saying, “I fancy Mr. Barker can tell us something about that,” and at Lemuel's mystified stare he added, “About the amount of smoke at a fire that a man could fight through. Mr. Seyton was speaking of the train that was caught in the forest fires down in Maine the other day. How was it with you at the St. Albans?” Lemuel blushed. It was clear that Mr. Bellingham had been reading that ridiculous newspaper version of his exploit. “There was hardly any smoke at all where I was. It didn't seem to have got into the upper entries much.” “That's just what I was saying!” triumphed Bellingham. “If a man has anything to do, he can get on. That's the way with the firemen. It's the rat-in-a-trap _idea_ that paralyses. Do you remember your sensations at all, when you were coming through the fire? Those things are very curious sometimes,” Bellingham suggested. “There was no fire where I was,” said Lemuel stoutly, but helpless to make a more comprehensive disclaimer. “I imagine you wouldn't notice that, any more than the smoke,” said Bellingham, with a look of satisfaction in his hero for his other guests. “It's a sort of ecstasy. Do you remember that fellow of Bret Harte's, in _How Christmas came to Simpson's Bar_, who gets a shot in his leg, or something, when he's riding to get the sick boy a Christmas present, and doesn't know it till he drops off his horse in a faint when he gets back?” He jumped actively up from the table, and found the book on his shelf. “There!” He fumbled for his glasses without finding them. “Will you be kind enough to read the passage, Mr. Barker? I think I've found the page. It's marked.” He sat down again, and the others waited. Lemuel read, as he needs must, and he did his best.