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Montag looked at these men whose faces were sunburnt by a thousand real and ten thousand iinary fires, whose work flushed their cheeks and fevered their eyes These niter fla black pipes They and their charcoal hair and soot-colored brows and bluish-ash-se showed Montag started up, his mouth opened Had he ever seen a fireman that didn't have black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel shaved but unshaved look? These es of himself! Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities? The color of cinders and ash about the fro in thunderheads of tobacco s the cellophane into a sound of fire

Montag looked at the cards in his own hands "I--I've been thinking About the fire last week About the man whose library we fixed What happened to him?"

"They took hi off to the asylum"

"He wasn't insane"

Beatty arranged his cards quietly "Any overnment and us"

"I've tried to i, "just hoould feel I mean, to have firemen burn our houses and our books"

"We haven't any books"

"But if we did have some"

"You got some?"

Beatty blinked slowly

"No" Montag gazed beyond them to the ith the typed lists of adown the years under his axe and his hose which sprayed not water but kerosene "No" But in his rill at hoain, he saw hi to an old man, a very old man, and the wind from the park was cold, too

Montag hesitated "What--was it always like this? The firehouse, our work? I mean, well, once upon a time"

"Once upon a time!" Beatty said "What kind of talk is that?"

Fool, thought Montag to hiive it away At the last fire, a book of fairy tales, he'd glanced at a single line "I mean," he said, "in the old days, before homes were coer voice was speaking for hi, "Didn't fire?"

"That's rich!" Stoneman and Black drew forth their rule books, which also contained brief histories of the Fire falish-influenced books in the Colonies First Firem