"Bless my soul! It cannot be true.

Where's my cane ?" "You don't mean to say you're goin' to the fire, father ?" asked his widowed daughter in surprise, for the captain had bowed beneath the weight of eighty-six winters, and rarely left the domestic hearth.
"Do you think I'd stay at home when Crawford's was a-burning ?" returned the captain.
"But remember, father, you ain't so young as you used to be.

You might catch your death of cold." "What! at a fire ?" exclaimed the old man, laughing at his own joke.
"You know what I mean.

It's dreadfully imprudent.

Why, I wouldn't go myself." "Shouldn't think you would, at your time of life!" retorted her father, chuckling.
So the old man emerged into the street, and hurried as fast as his unsteady limbs would allow, to the fire.
"How did it catch ?" the reader will naturally ask.
The young man who was the only other salesman besides Ben and the proprietor, had gone down cellar smoking a cigar.