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The warden said, “I don’t think you need worry about Wilter, Marshal. Our psychiatrist thinks he’s cured.”

“You don’t cure firebugs.” Ben Pedley, chief fire marshal, ran his knuckles along the purplish welt of scar tissue which laced across his bony jaw. “You seldom cure pyros. Never a commercial torch like Wilter. No compulsive mania with him. Just the same old stuff that lands most of the boys up here in your little, stone school-house. Lure of the fast buck.”

“Oh, I agree.” The warden crackled a confidential report. “What I meant, our records indicate Ted Wilter’s learned that lesson — and a trade, in the bargain. At the time of his sentence, he’d been a drifter.”

“A bum,” Pedley corrected brusquely. “He’d tried everything from panhandling to prestidigitation before he found what he thought was a soft snap, touching off retail stores whose owners wanted to sell their stocks to the insurance companies.”

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