“Hurrah! Dan draws first blood!” shouted Jack.
“Huh! Dan didn’t throw over the barn, he just slid over it,” snickered Randy.
Jack was hard at work making a small and perfectly round ball. Now, taking careful aim, he let fly with all his might.
“There she goes fair and square,” he announced with pardonable pride, as the snowball cleared the top of the barn by several feet and disappeared beyond.
The snowball had scarcely been thrown when two other balls thrown by Fred and another cadet went sailing over the barn. Then those in the contest seemed to acquire better skill, and soon nearly every one of them was topping the barn with the missiles.
“Phew! some hot work, I’ll say,” panted Will Hendry, usually called Fatty because he was the stoutest boy in the school.
“This exercise will do you good, Fatty,” returned Fred. “You need to reduce.”
“If Fatty keeps on he’ll be eating Colby Hall poor,” announced Spouter Powell.
“Huh! I don’t eat any more than any of you,” grumbled Fatty. “Fact is, I hold myself down.”
“Gee! listen to that, will you?” exclaimed Andy. “Fatty says he holds himself down! And this morning I saw him storing away three helpings of sausages and about ’steen dozen buckwheat cakes.”