on the roof. I also was going to have
to be careful when I took the board off so the sound of it sliding off
wouldn't go down the chimney through the stove.

In another jiffy I'd have had the board off, and have given it a toss
far out where it wouldn't have hit Poetry, and then I'd have been on
my way down again, but when I took hold of the wide, flat board, I
couldn't any more get it off than anything. I gasped out-loud when I
saw why I couldn't get it off, and that was that there was a nail
driven into each end of it, and a piece of stove pipe wire was wrapped
around the head of each nail and then the wire was twisted around and
around the brick chimney, down where it was smaller, and that crazy
old board wouldn't budge--an almost _new_ board, rather, and as soon
as I saw it, I knew it was the board out of the swing which we have in
the walnut tree at our house.... Why, the dirty crooks! I thought.
They wanted it to be _sure_ to look like Bill Collins put it up here.

I was holding onto the chimney, in fact I was sort of behind it, so I
wouldn't slide down.... I could hear sounds down in the schoolhouse of
somebody doing something to the stove, which must have been Mr. Black
finishing laying the fire, 'cause right that second I heard a sound
like an iron door closing on the big round iron Poetry-shaped stove,
and almost a second later, a puff of bluish smoke came bursting out
through a crack where the board didn't quite cover the chimney on one
side, and I knew that the fire was started. I knew that in a few
jiffies that one-room school would be filled with smoke, and a mad
teacher would come storming out to see what on earth was the matter
with the chimney, and I'd be in for it.

"Hey!" I hissed down to Poetry, shielding my voice with my hand so the
sound would go toward Poetry instead of down the chimney. Poetry heard
me and dived out far enough from the schoolhouse to see me, and I
hissed to him, "It's too late. The fire's already started. What'll I
do. I can't get it off. They've wired it on. If I had a pair of
pliers, I could cut the wire."

And Poetry yelled up to me and said, "There's a pair in the
schoolhouse."

The awfulest sounds came up the chimney from down inside the
schoolhouse, and I could just imagine what Mr. Black was thinking, and
maybe was saying too. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney beside my
face, but I knew the crack was too small for _all_ the smoke to get
out, and the room down ther