the Sophomore class fall down on the job, all right. You watch my
twelve names go through!"

Rosemary watched. So did all the high and half the grammar school,
for word of the dispute, variously colored to suit different
informants, had been noised around and the only persons in actual
ignorance of the state of affairs were the high school faculty. The
Student Council was desperately anxious that they should remain in
that state, for there had been one or two previous clashes over the
relative importance of the dramatic fund, and the members of the
council had no wish to be accused of "forcing" any unfair demands.
So, as Jack had foreseen, his nominations were allowed to stand and
the next afternoon, forty-eight laughing, shouting boys reported to
Bill McCormack, bluff and kindly member of the Eastshore Common
Council who would, in a larger municipality, have been called
"Streets and Highways Commissioner" or by similar sonorous title.

But before the boys met "Bill" in front of the town hall, the
president of the Student Council, Frank Fenton, and Will Mears,
president of the Junior class, had held a conference with Mr.
Edmonds, the most influential member, some said, next to the
president, Cameron Jordan, a cousin of the old and respected
physician. The result of this conference was that Bill McCormack
held in his fat, red hands a sheaf of papers which allotted the
streets to the four classes and took the decision quite away from
him.

"I was told to give these papers to the heads of the gangs," said
Mr. McCormack, smiling expansively. "Here ye are--Senior, Junior,
Sophomore, Freshman--them's your working papers, me lads, and now
off with ye; the shovels ye'll be finding in the basement of the
hall."

Jack Welles glanced at the slip of paper handed him, folded it up
and stuffed it in his pocket. As soon as his "gang" was fitted out
with snow shovels, he marched them away in the wake of one of the
lumbering wagons that was to carry the snow off to a vacant field on
the outskirts of the town.

"What did we draw, Jack?" asked Norman Cox curiously.

"Plummers Lane," said Jack laconically.

Plummers Lane, was the nearest approach to a "slumming section" that
Eastshore possessed. The idle, the shiftless and the vicious
congregated there, living in tumbled down shacks in the winter and
the middle of the streets, in summer. There were two factories, one
a novelty works, the other a canning and candy factory and the