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III


Sam Markham, around in back of the woodshed, where the charred stubble reached all the way to the plowed field, had the leather strap in his hand and the screaming boy by the arm.

“Now get it through your head, you don’t play with fire!—Do you hear me?”

The boy, tears streaming down his cheeks, looked at his father. His “Yes!” came out hastily, as Markham readied the strap for another blow.

“It could,” said Markham, “have burned down the shed, the carriage house, and maybe the barn. And if I hadn’t happened to plant this garden in a different spot this year, it would have! Once it starts, you can’t control it! You can’t burn that stubble unless the wind is right, and the ground is right, and you’ve run some furrows to stop it if it heads for Peters’s place, and you’ve got somebody ready just in case, after all, it jumps . . . Say—Peterses are away and only the Becker boy comes over to take care of their stock. What do you think would have happened if it had gone for Peters’s?”



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Framed