ch-enduring Wrykynian at
an extremely creditable rate of speed. Mr. Downing was by way of being a
sprinter. He had won handicap events at College sports at Oxford, and,
if Mike had not got such a good start, the race might have been over in
the first fifty yards. As it was, that victim of Fate, going well, kept
ahead. At the entrance to the school grounds he led by a dozen yards.
The procession passed into the field, Mike heading as before for
the pavilion.

As they raced across the soft turf, an idea occurred to Mike, which he
was accustomed in after years to attribute to genius, the one flash of
it which had ever illumined his life.

It was this.

One of Mr. Downing's first acts, on starting the Fire Brigade at
Sedleigh, had been to institute an alarm bell. It had been rubbed into
the school officially--in speeches from the dais--by the headmaster, and
unofficially--in earnest private conversations--by Mr. Downing, that at
the sound of this bell, at whatever hour of day or night, every member
of the school must leave his house in the quickest possible way, and
make for the open. The bell might mean that the school was on fire, or
it might mean that one of the houses was on fire. In any case, the
school had its orders--to get out into the open at once.

Nor must it be supposed that the school was without practice at this
feat. Every now and then a notice would be found posted up on the board
to the effect that there would be fire drill during the dinner hour that
day. Sometimes the performance was bright and interesting, as on the
occasion when Mr. Downing, marshaling the brigade at his front gate, had
said, "My house is supposed to be on fire. Now let's do a record!" which
the Brigade, headed by Stone and Robinson, obligingly did. They fastened
the hose to the hydrant, smashed a window on the ground floor (Mr.
Downing having retired for a moment to talk with the headmaster), and
poured a stream of water into the room. When Mr. Downing was at liberty
to turn his attention to the matter, he found that the room selected was
his private study, most of the light furniture of which was floating in
a miniature lake. That episode had rather discouraged his passion for
realism, and fire drill since then had taken the form, for the most
part, of "practicing escaping." This was done by means of canvas chutes,
kept in the dormitories. At the sound of the bell the prefect of the
dormitory would heave one end of the chute out o