too weak to stand.

"Here, we'll carry you to the school!" cried Roger, and he and some
others made a "chair," and thus the unfortunate lad was carried to Oak
Hall, where he was placed in a rocking chair in front of a fire.

"I went down all of a sudden," he explained, when he could talk. "I
yelled for all I was worth, and I saw some of you running towards me.
Then I went out of sight, and the next I knew Messmer's feet were on my
head. I caught hold of one foot and was dragged almost to the surface.
Then my strength gave out,--and I hardly know what I did after that."

"Dave pulled you out," answered Phil. "He saw one of your hands sticking
out of the snow, and he got us fellows to form two lines, with him on
the end."

"I am very thankful," said Tom Hally, and he gave Dave's hand a warm
squeeze. "I shall never go near that hollow again!"

"It's a dangerous place in the winter time," said Roger. "We should have
known better than to have retreated in that direction."

"Well, the Army of the Red won!" cried one of the students. "Say, wasn't
it a dandy battle!"

"It certainly was!" answered several others.

Doctor Clay was much alarmed to learn that Hally and Messmer had gone
down in a hole in the snow, and he came to see how the former was
getting along. Then he praised Dave and his chums for their bravery in
effecting a rescue.

In the past Hally, who was a rather silent student, had had little to
say to the other boys, but now he spoke to Dave, and asked him quite a
number of questions concerning himself and the other occupants of
dormitories Nos. 11 and 12.

"I'd like to be in with your bunch," said he, wistfully. "I don't like
our crowd very well."

"Where are you?" asked Dave.

"In No. 13--with Nat Poole and his crowd."

"They aren't very much of Nat's crowd any more, are they?"

"Oh, several boys still stick to him. But he makes me sick."

"Well, I am sorry, Hally, but our rooms are filled up," said Dave.

"Poole is down on you, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"He told me you and he had had a lot of trouble."

"So we have--but I claim it was mostly Nat's fault. He does some pretty
mean things."

"So he does, for a fact," and Tom Hally nodded earnestly. "He is down on
Maurice Hamilton too, isn't he?"

"Yes, but Shadow never did him any harm. It's just Nat's mean
disposition," returned Dave; and there the conversation had to come to
an end.

But that talk, coupled with the fact that Dave and his chum