CHAPTER XI.
THE STRONG PERSON'S NARRATIVE Near the close of the following winter came news of the father's death.
In some town of which the boy had never heard, in another State, a ramshackle wooden theatre had burned one night and the father had perished in the fire through his own foolhardiness.

The news came by two channels: first, a brief and unilluminating paragraph in the newspaper, giving little more than the fact itself.
But three days later came a friend of the father, bringing his few poor effects and a full relation of the matter.

He was a person of kind heart, evidently, to whom the father had spoken much of his boys in Edom--a bulky, cushiony, youngish man who was billed on the advertising posters of the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville as "Samson the Second," with a portrait of himself supporting on the mighty arch of his chest a grand piano, upon which were superimposed three sizable and busy violinists.
He told his tale to the two boys and Clytie, Grandfather Delcher having wished to hear no more of the occurrence.
"You understan', it was like this now," he began, after having with a calculating eye rejected two proffered chairs of delicate structure and selected a stout wooden rocker into which he settled tentatively, as one whom experience had taught to distrust most of the chairs in common use.
"The people in front had got out all right, the fire havin' started on the stage from the strip-light, and also our people had got out through the little stage-entrance, though havin' to leave many of our props--a good coat I had to lose meself, fur-lined around the collar, by way of helpin' the Sisters Devere get out their box of accordions that they done a Dutch Daly act with for an enn-core.

Well, as I was sayin', we'd all hustled down these back stairs--they was already red hot and smokin' up good, you understan', and there we was shiverin' outside in the snow, kind of rattled, and no wonder, at that, and the ladies of the troupe histurrical--it had come like a quick-change, you understan', when all of a sudden up in the air goes the Original Kelly.

Say, he lets out a yell for your life--'Oh, my God!' he says, 'my kids--up there,' pointin' to where the little flames was spittin' out through the side like a fire-eatin' act.