“Why, some of the boys have been telling us the greatest stories you ever heard, all about that terrible beast Farmer Hobson has out at his place. They say he chased Lanky around a tree in the pasture, and with his horns just tossed him--well, one said the tree was forty feet over, but Jack Eastwick modified it and called it thirty. But even that is a high jump for anyone to make!” At that Frank exploded with laughter, and even Lanky grinned. “Say, aren’t they the limit, now, giving the girls all that taffy?” the latter remarked. “I did meet with the farmer’s bull, Minnie, and he chased me around a tree, all right, because I couldn’t sprint as well as Frank and Bones, being too far from the fence at the time. So I climbed that tree. And in the end they got a rope to me, which I fastened to a high limb, and went hand over hand, till I was over the fence and out. And now they all say I’ve got to enter the athletic meet as the champion tight-rope walker, and performer on the high trapeze.” Just then the bell rang for school to begin, and laughing at Lanky’s good-natured description of his wonderful adventure, the girls set out on a run toward the entrance of the fine building of which Columbia people were so proud. CHAPTER VII THE BENEFITS OF DISCIPLINE “Fire!” The dreadful cry is never heard without a wave of fear. And in a crowded school it must always strike terror to the hearts of every child, young and old. Yet that was what came floating in through the open windows, as the droning of pupils reciting ceased for a brief time between classes. Fortunately, Professor Tyson Parke, the principal of the high school, had always insisted on the most rigid fire drill. Nobody ever knew when this was going to be sprung on them, for the one object was to make the pupils feel that there need never be any fear of a holocaust; since ample fire-escape stairways, iron ones along the outside of the great building, had been provided. And so, on this afternoon, after that first spasm of alarm, some of the more knowing among the scholars quickly decided that it must be a last fire-drill test the principal was giving them, before the break-up for the summer holidays. Their confidence ran to others, just as a spark plays along a train of gunpowder. Some smiled, and even nodded their heads in a wise fashion, as if to say they could not be deceived, and that it was only a mock alarm after all. The various teachers, as in duty bound, started their classes toward the fire-escapes which had been arranged especially for their use. There must be the utmost order preserved, for that was one of the rules to be strictly enforced.