The boys, running to the rescue, had a confused vision of a man flying out to one side, head first, toward a snowbank. They also saw the horse rear up on his hind legs, struggle desperately to retain his balance and then, with a fierce leap, break loose from the cutter and run on, free, across the ice. As the boys hastened on, they saw the man slowly pick himself up out of the snowbank, and gaze wonderingly about him, as if trying to fathom what had happened, whether it had been an earthquake or an avalanche. Indeed, so large was the snowball, and so strong was the force of it, for it had gained speed by the rush down the steep hill, that it really was a small avalanche. The ball had split into several pieces on hitting the cutter, the shafts of which were broken and splintered, showing how the horse had been able to free himself. “We’ll have to--to apologize,” murmured Tom, as he and his companions kept on toward the man who was now gazing down disconsolately at the ruin wrought. “Yes, I guess we will,” agreed Jack. “We--why, Cæsar’s corn-plasters!” he cried. “Look who it is--Professor Skeel!” “The old tyrant of Elmwood Hall!” murmured Bert. “Who’d have thought it?” “Now we are in for it,” added Tom, grimly. “Burton Skeel!” said George in a whisper as he caught sight of the angry-looking man, gazing at his smashed cutter and staring off over the ice in the direction taken by the runaway horse. “Skeel, the man who made so much trouble for Tom Fairfield. And we upset him! Oh--good-night!” Those of you who have read the first volume of this series, entitled “Tom Fairfield’s Schooldays,” do not need to be introduced to Professor Skeel. The unpopular instructor of Elmwood Hall, where Tom and his chums attended, had been the cause of a rebellion, in which Tom was a sort of leader, and, later, a pacifier. Tom Fairfield, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Brokaw Fairfield, of Briartown, N. J., had made himself popular soon after coming to Elmwood, where he had been sent to board while his parents went to Australia about some property matters. And now to find that the man upset from his cutter was this same unpopular teacher, Professor Skeel, was enough to give pause to any set of lads. But Tom Fairfield was no coward. He proved that when the _Silver Star_ was wrecked, an account of which you may read of in my second volume, called “Tom Fairfield at Sea,” for the days that followed the foundering of that vessel were trying ones indeed, and the dreary days spent in an open boat, when Mr. Skeel proved himself not only a coward, but almost a scoundrel, showed Tom fully what sort of a man the professor was.