his hat tossed after him. Then the teacher walked quietly
back to his seat behind the desk on the platform, and without the
slightest sign of flurry or mental disturbance, he told one of the
sweetest and most delightful incidents to which his pupils had ever
listened. He closed with the promise to give them another at the end
of the week, if they continued in the good course on which they were so
fairly started.

"He catched me foul," explained the indignant Tom Britt the following
day in discussing his hurried exit from the schoolroom; "if he had only
let me know he was coming, it would be him that dove out the door
instead of me."

The sullen youth did not receive much sympathy at first, for Mr.
Lathrop was steadily winning the affections of the pupils; but Dick and
Fred rebelled at such quiet submission to authority, and acted so
sullenly that they, too, were shut out from the privilege of listening
to the next story related by the teacher to the rest of the school. It
had been agreed among the three boys that they should refuse to depart
when ordered to do so by the instructor, and that when he made a move
toward them, they would assail him simultaneously and rout him "horse,
foot and dragoons."

But the business was conducted with such a cyclone rush that the plan
of campaign was entirely overturned. Before the rebels could combine,
all three were out doors, so shaken up that they agreed that a new
system of resistance would have to be adopted.

And thus it came about that at the noon recess, one day of the
following week, the boys of Bushville school gathered in the cool shade
of the woods to listen to the plan of the three malcontents for
destroying the authority of the school. It was mainly curiosity on the
part of the younger portion, who had little sympathy with the motives
of the leaders and were quite sure they would meet with failure.

"I've made up my mind that I won't stand it," announced Tom, after the
situation had been freely discussed; "no boy with any spirit will allow
a teacher to run him out of school in the style he served me."

"What then made you let him do it?" asked little freckled-face Will
Horton, from where he lay on the ground.

"Didn't I tell you he catched me foul?" demanded Tom, glaring at the
urchin; "if I'd knowed what was coming things would have been
different."

"Dick and Fred knowed he was coming for _them_," added Will, "for he
walked clear across the schoolroom."