dropped down beside him. Dragonfly was still coming along not more
than fifty feet behind us, with little Jim staying back with him.

I hated to stop, and I hated to have to realize what was happening,
but it was, and that was that Mr. Black was going to get to the
schoolhouse first and he'd start the fire in the schoolhouse stove
first, on account of he wouldn't see the ladder first, 'cause it was
on the opposite side of the school from the woodshed where he kept his
kindling wood.

I'd seen Mr. Black start fires in the Poetry-shaped iron stove before,
and this is the way he always did it.... He'd go straight to the
corner of the schoolhouse under the long shelf where we all kept our
dinner pails, and pick up a tin can of kerosene which he kept in the
corner, and in which he kept some neat little sticks standing. Those
little sticks would be all soaked with kerosene from having stood
there all night or longer, and he'd take them to the stove and lay
them in carefully, along with other small pieces of wood and a few
larger pieces, and then he would very carefully light a match and
touch the flame to the kerosene-soaked sticks, and right away there
would be a nice fire....

I knew it would take Mr. Black only a little while to lay the fire,
and in a few minutes the fire in the stove would be roaring away. But
with the board on the chimney, the smoke couldn't get out, and it'd
have to come out of the stove somewhere, which it would, and the
schoolhouse would be filled with smoke in a jiffy; also I remembered
the Christmas tree which we'd left up since Christmas, wasn't more
than fifteen feet from the stove, and its needles were dry enough to
burn....

Something had to be done in a hurry, and yet there was Mr. Black
getting closer and closer to the schoolhouse.... In fact, it was
already too late to get there before he went inside, without being
seen. I knew that if I got there in time to hurry up that ladder and
take off the board, I'd have to do it _after_ Mr. Black got inside,
and before he could get the fire laid and started....

The rail fence behind which we were hiding right that minute was on
the same side of the school the ladder was, and about as far from the
school as our barn is from our house....

All of us were squatted down behind the fence now, and I took charge
of the gang and said, "You guys stay here. The very minute he gets in,
I'll dive out of here and make a bee-line for the schoolhouse, and zi