emence than usual. Then I went
up stairs.

I noticed for three or four days that the internal machinery of the
meter seemed to be rattling around in a remarkable manner; it could
be heard all over the house. But I was pleased to find that it
was working again in spite of the cold weather, and I retained my
serenity.

About two weeks afterward my gas bill came. It accused me of burning
during the quarter about one million five hundred thousand feet of
gas, and it called on me to settle to the extent of nearly three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I put on my hat and went down to
the gas-office. I addressed one of the clerks:

"How much gas did you make at the Blank works last quarter?"

"I dunno; about a million feet, I reckon."

"Well, you have charged me in my bill for burning half a million more
than you made; I want you to correct it."

"Less see the bill. Hm--m--m! this is all right. It's taken off of the
meter. That's what the meter says."

"S'pose'n it does; I _couldn't_ have burned more'n you made."

"Can't help that; the meter can't lie."

"Well, but how d'you account for the difference?"

"Dunno; 'tain't our business to go nosing and poking around after
scientific truth. We depend on the meter. If that says you burned six
million feet, why, you _must_ have burned it, even if we never made a
foot of gas out at the works."

"To tell you the honest truth," said I, "the meter was frozen, and I
stirred it up with a poker and set it whizzing around."

"Price just the same," said the clerk. "We charge for pokers just as
we do for gas."

"You are not actually going to have the audacity to ask me to pay
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars on account of that poker?"

"If it was seven hundred thousand dollars, I'd take it with a calmness
that would surprise you. Pay up, or we'll turn off your gas."

"Turn it off and be hanged," I exclaimed as I emerged from the office,
tearing the bill to fragments. Then I went home; and grasping that
too lavish poker, I approached the meter. It had registered another
million feet since the bill was made out; it was running up a score of
a hundred feet a minute; in a month I would have owed the gas company
more than the United States Government owes its creditors. So I beat
the meter into a shapeless mass, tossed it into the street and turned
off the gas inside the cellar.

Then I went down to the _Patriot_ office to persuade Major Slott
to denounce the fraud