e the workman who would bring a
match on the premises would be counted worse than an assassin.

"Just the same, though, matches get into the works once in a while,"
remarked the young packer. "I found a piece of a match one day in a tub
of dynamite; it had the head on, too. Say, it's bad enough to find
buttons and pebbles, but when I saw that match-head--well, it made me
weak in the knees."

This brought back the old question, When does dynamite explode, and when
does it not explode? I mentioned the red-spark theory.

"I think that's correct," agreed the packer. "I've watched 'em burn old
dynamite-boxes, and if there are iron nails in the boxes they explode as
soon as the nails get red-hot; if there are no nails, they don't
explode."

"You mean empty boxes?" I asked.

"Certainly; but there's nitroglycerin in the wood, lots of it. It oozes
out of the dynamite, especially on a hot day, and soaks into everything.
Why, I suppose there's enough nitroglycerin in the overalls I wear to
blow a man into--well, I wouldn't want to lay 'em on an anvil and give
'em a whack with a sledge."

There was a certain novelty to me in the thought of a pair of old
overalls exploding; but I was soon to hear of stranger things. By this
time other workmen had drawn up chairs, and were ready now with modest
contributions from their own experience.

"Tell ye a queer thing," said one man. "In that explosion the other
day,--I mean the freezing-house,--a car loaded with powder [dynamite]
had just passed, not a minute before the explosion. Lucky for the three
men with the car, wasn't it? But what gets me is how the blast, when it
came, blew the harness off the horse. Yes, sir; that's what it
did--clean off; and away he went galloping after the men as hard as he
could leg it. Nobody touched a buckle or a strap. It was dynamite
unhitched that animal."

"Dynamite did another trick that day," put in a tall man. "It caught a
bird on the wing. Dunno whether 'twas a robin or a swaller, but 'twas a
bird, all right. Caught it in a sheet of tin blowed off the roof, an'
jest twisted that little bird all up as it sailed along, and when it
struck the ground, there was the bird fast in a cage made in the air out
of a tin roof. Alive? Yes, sir, alive; and that shows how fast dynamite
does business."

So the talk ran on, with many little details of explosions. The expert
explained that the air waves of a great concussion move along with
crests and troughs