The two friends retired to their own room, and Bar astonished Val by actually going to work on his books. “You’re a queer fellow,” said Val. “Why, I’m all ears.” “So am I,” said Bar, “but I mean to improve my time, for all that. This wind’ll do our work for us without any help of ours. Seems as if it was getting more and more westerly all the while.” Nevertheless, it required all the resolution Bar could muster to do anything worth while with his Greek, and Val vainly endeavored to find anything interesting in one of Kingsley’s best novels. So long a time went by, in fact, that even Bar began to have half a fear that his machinery had got “stuck” in some way. So it had, for there had been more than a little rust on those old wheels, and, in spite of the oil, the “wing” had to work back and forth a good while before it had rubbed them into anything like easy running order. Then the wind, too, at first, had come only in fitful and insufficient gusts, and not from the right direction, and so the good people of Ogleport, early sleepers and early risers, had a fine opportunity to stow themselves away in bed before the “ghosts” got fairly loose in the belfry. Not all of them were sufficiently easy in their minds to go to sleep at once, however, and Mrs. Dryer had just remarked to the Doctor, as a sort of clincher to a good many other things she had been saying: “Fond of fast horses, too, Dr. Dryer; that’s the kind of man you’ve got. The Academy’s all going to destruction. Riding ’round the country in buggies. Effie, too, what do you say to that? Boys fighting on the green and calling it boxing lessons. Threatening to drown you in the mill-pond. Tying your cow’s horns to the bell-rope. Buying boats on the lake----” “Dorothy Jane,” began the principal, but he was suddenly interrupted by a deep, mournful, booming sound from the Academy belfry, and an exclamation from his wife. “Mercy on us, Doctor, what’s that?” “Dorothy Jane,” replied the Doctor, as he slowly arose in bed, “can it be within the compass of mundane possibilities that that outrageous cow----” “The cow? Poor thing!” returned his “third,” disdainfully. “Ain’t you ashamed, Dr. Dryer! Do you suppose she’d be out on such a night as this? Listen to the rain on the window. There it is again!” “Dorothy Jane!” exclaimed the Doctor, as he sprang to his feet and began to dress himself, “this proceeding should arouse all Ogleport!” “That bell!” mourned Mrs. Dryer. “Yes, indeed!” replied the Doctor. “It’s a terrible affliction.” George Brayton also heard the first sound made by the bell, and it somehow put him in mind of his two young friends, although he well knew they were at that very moment in their room. He was sure of it, if from nothing else, by the unnecessary amount of racket Bar Vernon was making in getting on his boots.