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92 "Trick? Do you think I am a wizard? I find you smoking a cigar and you go and see worms, or snakes, just as if you had been drinking. Maybe you do drink."

"I don't. I ain't teched a drop in six months."

"Well, you had better do something for yourself," said Tom, as he backed away from the ticket window.

"I don't understand this, nohow!" muttered the old station master. "But I ain't goin' to* smoke thet cigar no more!" he added, and threw the weed out on the railroad tracks.

When Tom got to the wagon he was shaking with laughter. The joke was too good to keep, and as they drove along he told Jack Ness about what had occurred.

"It's one on Ricks," said the hired man, with a broad grin. "He's kind o' a superstitious man an' he'll imagine all sorts o' things!"

"Well, if it cures him of smoking it will be a good job done," answered Tom. "I've seen him with a pipe in his mouth when a lady wanted a railroad ticket, and he would blow the smoke right into her face."

It made Randolph Rover somewhat nervous to have so many fireworks and so much powder around the premises—and there was a good reason for this, for the facilities for fighting fire