All this was on Thursday, and for the rest of the day The Junior Four stayed very close together, not knowing at what moment the upper grade fellows might tire of their present attitude of contemptuous silence and indulge in violence. By the time afternoon school was over the day students had learned of the situation and had already begun to take sides, and by the next noon the school was sharply divided into camps. The rivalry between house students and day students was for the time forgotten and upper grade fellows hastened to the support of Ben and his cohorts and lower grade boys flocked to the standard of Bert and Lanny and the others. Being at last forced to choose sides, Cupples and Crandall threw in their lots with the revolutionists, and with their enlistment the last semblance of peace vanished. Every room was divided against itself, for every room was occupied by an upper grade fellow and a lower grade fellow. The second floor of the house these evenings was strangely quiet. To be sure, when study hour was over the lower grade fellows managed to get together somewhere, while Stanley Pierce’s room became the regular meeting place for the enemy. But as these meetings were generally councils of war the usual chatter of voices and ring of laughter were missing. The first real engagement of the opposing forces occurred on Friday afternoon and resulted in a victory for the revolutionists, as you shall see.
Small resided in Number 5 with George Waters. Waters had been, from the first, in favor of strong methods and the heavy hand in dealing with the mutiny, and on this occasion his patience deserted him. Hurrying upstairs after school, he found Small struggling into a sweater. Waters was after an extra skate strap, and, after searching everywhere in vain, he charged Small with having hidden it. Small denied it indignantly, and Waters, having worked himself into a fit of bad temper, insisted that Small should help look for it. Small, inwardly quaking, refused. There was a wordy war, and in the end Waters took the key from the inside of the door.
“You’ll stay here until you find that, Small,” he declared from the doorway. “We’ll see whether you’ll do as you’re told!”
With that Waters departed, locking the door after him and pocketing the key. Left imprisoned, Small merely grinned and shrugged his shoulders. He had promised to go skating on the creek with the other juniors and Nan, but he much preferred a warm room and a book to read. Ten minutes later, his feet on the radiator and a rattling good book in his hands, Small had quite forgotten Waters, his imprisonment, the Cause and all else. Half an hour passed unheeded and then voices called from outside:
“Small! O you Small!”
Small, unheeding, read on. The hero was cutting his way through the jungle of South Africa closely pursued by a band of head-hunters.
“Small! Where are you, Small?”
This time Small heard and looked out of the window. Down below in the snow stood Lanny and Bert, come in search of him. Small opened the window.
“Hello,” he said. “I can’t come out. Waters has locked me in.”
Bert and Lanny thrilled. Here was war to the knife!