“Oh, such a dandy old high wind,” answered Pete. “Well, adios.”
“Wonder what he meant?” said Allan, on the way back. “It would be just like him to get into another mess.”
“About time,” chuckled Tommy. “Good night.”
Allan went to bed soon after eleven, with Two Spot, according to nightly custom, curled up against the small of his back. For a while he lay awake listening to the howling and buffeting of the wind, but presently sleep came to him.
It seemed hours later, but was in reality scarcely thirty minutes, when he awoke abruptly with the wild clanging of a bell in his ears. He sat up and listened. It was undoubtedly the fire-bell, and had he had any doubt about it the sound of running footsteps in the street would have convinced him at once.
For a moment he weighed the prospective excitement of a conflagration against the comforts of the warm bed. In the end the fire offered greater inducements, and he leaped out of bed, lighted the gas, and tumbled into his clothes. And all the time the fire-bell clanged and clashed on the March wind. Leaving Two Spot to the undisputed possession of the bed, Allan left the house and looked expectantly about him. But there was no glow in the sky in any quarter; darkness reigned everywhere save about the infrequent street lamps. Here and there persons were running toward the fire-house, and Allan followed their example.
Down Main Street he hurried, entered the yard back of the library, and cut across in the face of the buffeting wind to the beginning of Town Lane. When he reached Elm Street he was part of a steady stream of excited citizens and students, all hurrying anxiously toward where, half-way down the narrow thoroughfare, the brazen alarum was pealing deafeningly forth. And then, for the first time since he had awoke, Allan recollected Pete and his mysterious observation regarding fire. And instantly he knew that Pete and the fire-bell were in some way working mischief together.
Pete’s rooms were in the building at the corner of Center Street, and next door stood the fire-house, a plain two-storied building, surmounted by a twenty-foot tower, at the top of which hung the bell. When Allan reached the scene the windows of Pete’s front room were brilliantly illumined, and from one of them hung Pete, exchanging lively salutations with friends in the throng below.
For a moment Allan’s suspicions were deadened. In front of the fire-house the crowd jostled and craned their necks as they stared wonderingly upward to where the tower showed indistinctly against the midnight sky. On every hand were heard bewildered ejaculations, while members of the volunteer fire department ran hither and thither, questioning, suggesting, and plainly distracted. The big doors were open and inside the engine and hose-cart, horses in harness, were ready to sally forth the instant any one discovered where the fire was or why the bell clanged on and on without apparent reason. Through a hole in the ceiling a big rope descended, and at every clang of the bell it rose and fell again, and the building shook with the jar.
“Hello, Allan! Isn’t this great?” shouted a voice in his ear, and Allan turned to find Hal, arrayed principally in a plaid dressing-gown and white duck cricket hat, grinning from ear to ear.