THE RESULT OF THE FIRE
The merciless fiend did its work, and before the arrival of anything worthy the designation “fire extinguishing apparatus,” the barn had been razed. A farmhouse joined up to the barn, and a portion of this building, along with some of the furniture, was damaged. The morn was now breaking, and there was the usual gathering of quizzing onlookers. It turned out that I was the last man out of the barn. Some of my bed-fellows, I found, were as guilty as myself in disregarding the force of the proverb “Look before you leap,” for one of them, in making his hurried exit, jumped through the first opening he came across to find himself in the stables—“in a manger for his bed.” Through the fall he sustained a broken arm. One or two of the others were a little hurt.