Several more of the larger boys added their confident self-assurance that the boys of Ogleport were likely to be equal to any emergency which could possibly arise, but Zeb shook his head wisely as he remarked: “That’s all very well, so long as we only had old Sol to handle, but this new man’s a very different sort of a fellow.” “I ain’t afraid of him,” said Hy Allen. “Nor I.” “Nor I.” “Nor I,” responded half a dozen voices, but Zeb Fuller again shook his head. “That ain’t it, boys; the new man’s all right, and we must kind o’ stand by him, but there’ll be great times at the Academy this fall and winter, and we must be ready for ’em.” It was all very mysterious and oracular, nor could Zeb himself have fully explained his prophetic meaning, but he related to his friends how George Brayton had rescued him from the three vagabonds of Rodney, and not a boy of them but dimly comprehended the possibility of something new and stirring, if old Sol was to be reïnforced by a man of that sort. “I think, boys,” said Zeb, at last, “it’s our first duty to explore the Academy. Not one of us has been inside of it for two months.” There was no gainsaying a piece of generalship like that, and the conclave broke up immediately, only to find its way, in squads of various sizes, to the long double line of sheds at the back of the village green. Under cover of these, it was easy enough to reach, unseen, a point directly in the rear of the barn-like white edifice which the wisdom of successive generations had consecrated to learning. But it was not the outside of the Academy building which Zeb and his friends had come to explore. Neither did they perplex themselves by fruitless attempts at any of the well-locked doors. A board of proper length was promptly placed below one of the first-floor windows in the rear, not more than ten feet from the ground, and Hy Allen was clinging to the window-sill in a twinkling. “Fastened on the inside,” he exclaimed, after a fruitless effort. “Come down, then,” said Zeb. “We must try another.” And so they did, but with a result that was but faintly expressed by Zeb Fuller’s final declaration: “Something wrong, boys. Old Sol’s been plotting against us again. It won’t do for us to go around in front. Not in broad daylight. But we must look out for our rights. Next thing we shall have a rebellion among the teachers after the school begins.” The symptoms threatened something of the kind, doubtless, but just then one of the smaller boys, who had been acting as a sort of scout or sentinel, came up with the intelligence that a large wagon was being hauled across the green, towards the Academy, and that it was accompanied by the principal himself, with two or three of the trustees and a stranger, on foot. “Hurrah!” shouted Zeb. “That’s the new apparatus. Boys, we’re in the right place at the right time. It would never do to let that stuff be stowed away without our help. We’d never know where half of it went to.”