ll Collins--and there was Mr. Black and his horse
getting farther and farther up the road which was the road that leads
past Circus' and Big Jim's houses, which as you know are on the other
side of the road from each other.

But we couldn't stand there and just watch a runaway horse with a man
chasing it, when a schoolhouse was on fire, or was supposed to be. I'd
been so excited about the runaway horse that I'd almost forgotten the
schoolhouse.

I turned around quick to the door, and would you believe it? Little
Jim and Poetry and Dragonfly were already inside and I'd been
standing out there by what used to be a gate, watching Mr. Black and
his horse all by myself! Even Dragonfly was inside although he had
opened one of the windows and was standing leaning half way out and
breathing fresh air so he wouldn't sneeze, he, as you know, being
allergic to smoke. That schoolhouse certainly looked funny with the
sunlight which came in from the windows, shining through the bluish
smoke, so that things at first weren't very clear to my eyes, but when
about a half-jiffy later, my eyes were accustomed to the dark light, I
saw a really crazy looking schoolhouse. There on the teacher's desk,
upside down, was the teacher's great big swivel chair; and the brooms
and the mop were piled on top of that, and on the blackboard written
in great big letters with chalk, was Poetry's poem about a teacher not
having any hair. The old Christmas tree which had been standing so
pretty and straight in a corner of the platform was lying on the
floor, and the popcorn and paper chains which the Sugar Creek pupils
had made were in a tangled up mess all over the tree and the floor.
The stove door was open and the fire box was half-filled with snow,
which maybe Mr. Black had scooped in to put out the fire he'd started
awhile ago.

All that mess, with the turned-over tree and Poetry's poem and the
topsyturvy desk and chair, meant that two boys you know about had not
only put the board across the chimney but had crawled into the
schoolhouse through one of the windows maybe and upset things, then
had printed the poem there for our teacher to see and--well, you can
guess I wasn't feeling very much like a gentleman. I knew that if
Shorty Long and Bob Till were right there right that minute I'd
probably prove to them that I wasn't one yet.

It was Little Jim who woke us all up that something had to be done. We
were all sort of standing helpless, looking ar