d Scotty, with a long, dismayed whistle.

"It'll be bad for the gent's white collar if he comes in here," said
Dan solemnly. "Murderin' blazes, who's that?"

Now, it happened that by an evil chance Gabby Johnny, the
Secretary-Treasurer, had been driving past the school on his way to the
woods, and seeing smoke issuing from the windows of the building over
which he considered himself the especial guardian, he stopped his team
and rushed upon the scene, and there he stood now, in the silent crowd
of frightened girls and sobered boys, gazing at the devastation with
such an expression of aghast horror, that at the sight of him all
Scotty's compunction vanished and he laughed aloud.

Gabby Johnny peered through the smoke and discerned his enemy,
evidently rejoicing over his evil work.

"Ah, ye ill piece!" he shouted, stepping up to the boy and shaking his
fist in his face, "Ah kenned it was you! Aye, Ah kenned! If there's
ony scandal'us goin's on ye'll be in it! It's an evil end ye're comin'
til, wi' yer goin's on; aye, that's what ye are! Ye neither fear God,
nor regard man! Sik a like onceevilised----"

Now Gabby Johnny was prepared upon all occasions to prove his right to
his sobriquet, and Dan Murphy well knew he would not stop until he had
driven Scotty to extreme measures, so here he mercifully interfered in
his friend's behalf. He had no mind to defy a trustee, so, being of a
diplomatic turn, determined to divert the tide of wrath by the simple
expedient of producing a counter-irritant. He slipped out quietly from
the line of culprits, and snatching up a well-packed snowball hurled it
straight and true at the team standing in the road. The missile was a
hard one, and the nervous young colts, their heads erect, their
nostrils indignant, went jingling off down the road, their heels
sending a fine snowstorm over the old bobsleigh, leaping in their wake.

Gabby Johnny heard his bells and his eloquence suddenly ceased. At the
same instant Dan burst in upon him, his eyes starting from his head,
his breath coming in gasps.

"Sure, your team's runnin' away!" he bawled. "They're runnin' away! I
can't stop them; they're gone clane wild!"

Gabby Johnny waited neither to hear nor deliver more. He darted out
and down the road, followed by a hailstorm of snowballs and the joyful
cheers of Number Nine. And as he went he howled breathless anathemas,
alternately at his wayward horses and back at the yelling mob b