The wooden plug was shot out of the radiator with a report like a pistol shot at a quarter past ten o'clock in the morning. Every child in the room rushed screaming toward the sliding-door leading to the stairway. So fierce was the impetus of the crowd that the door was twisted off its tracks and turned half-way around. Miss Agnes Carlen, the teacher, was unable to control the children, for they had swept past her before she really understood what had happened. She stood helpless, half fainting, fearing that the heavy sliding-door would fall and crush her pupils. Meantime great clouds of steam came hissing from the radiators. With a great clattering of many feet the frightened boys and girls swarmed down the stairway, looking for places of safety. Forty of them ran out into the school-yard, but forty more were kept in-doors by Miss Searle, the principal of the Primary Department, and her aids. At the moment of the explosion and panic the boys and girls of the Grammar Department on the top floor were almost panic-stricken. They heard the loud report beneath them, the hissing of steam, the screams, and the swift trampling feet. Every one was scrambling up from his desk, when Robert Bain jumped out into the aisle, and cried: "Keep your seats! There's no danger if you stay where you are!" Those words stopped the rush like magic. Seeing Bain's coolness and courage, all the others were ashamed to show themselves cowards. It was not so much the words he uttered as his manner in saying them that swayed the crowd. His tone not only showed that he was not frightened, but the order rang out sharply and confidently, as if the boy knew he would be obeyed. A few moments later Miss Emma Johnson, the teacher in charge of the class, learned all about the accident on the floor below, and told the children of it. There was, of course, no possible danger of panic now. What would have happened if young Bain had not spoken at the right moment? Very likely the children would have rushed out, like Miss Carlen's pupils, before they could be checked. A steep stairway lay before them, and probably many of them would have been badly hurt, if not killed, in the wild downward flight. An accident somewhat like this, in the Greenwich Avenue Public School in New York many years ago, had the most serious consequences. Robert Bain is fourth sergeant in one of the two cadet companies of the Marion Public School. He was very happy, but also full of blushes, when Mr. Du Rie, the principal of the school, complimented him before all his friends. If every boy who reads of his brave act will make up his mind to keep cool in any panic near him, he will have paid the best possible compliment to Robert Bain. THE TROLLEY BIKE OF 1900. BY N. FREDERICK CARRYL. "A letter, Uncle Tom! From the New Jersey Consolidated Traction Company, as sure as I live. Now we can start any minute." "Right you are, my boy," said the brisk old gentleman of close on sixty.