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184 word seemed to wring my heartstrings, but I tried to put a good face on it, and said:

"I know, I know, but I must go on all the same."

"What for, if the whole place is in ruins?"

"I want to pick up the pieces."

"There aren't any pieces," said he, "not so much as you could put on the end of your finger."

"Jojot," said I, "there is no use your trying to persuade me that there is absolutely nothing left! My apprentices and the neighbors would not stand by, and see all I have in the world burnt to ashes, without trying to save a few sticks of furniture for me!"

"You don't know anything about it," cried he. "Why, your neighbors are the very ones who set your house on fire!"

I was perfectly crushed at this news, and he, with the sort of perverse satisfaction one has in making out anything as bad as possible, went on to tell me the whole story from the beginning.

"You must know," said he, "that the plague is at the bottom of the trouble; our town Councilors, the Provost, and the whole crew of them, fled away, and left us as sheep without a shepherd, and the people at this lost their heads completely, so that when a fresh case of the disease broke out in