What the outcome of this affray might have been is doubtful, but just at its inception a terrified cry of "fire," from the remainder of the school parted the combatants. They came to their feet to find the flames leaping up the walls, and clouds of smoke rolling through the room. It was no joke this time and the boys wasted not an instant. Scotty leaped from the floor to head an impromptu fire brigade, and for a few moments they worked desperately. They dragged down the burning branches and flung them out of doors; they flew to and from the pump, they flung snow and water among the flames, and after a short but desperate struggle the fire was conquered. It was all over in a few moments, and the victors stood, begrimed and breathless, and rather ruefully surveyed the havoc they had unwittingly wrought. The lately spotless walls were scorched and blackened, the decorations depended from the fastenings, charred and ugly, and the floor was swimming in inky water. "Horo!" cried 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.