Kenneth pulled on his trousers and shoes, looked for a coat only to find that Joe had thrown all the coats out of the windows, and went back to the corridor. All up and down it boys were staggering along with trunks and bags, while from the western end the smoke was volleying forth from Number 19 in great billowy clouds. From the floor above raced fellows with suit cases and small trunks, shouting and laughing in the excitement of the moment.
One of the older boys, Harris by name, came galloping upstairs with a fire extinguisher, followed by a crowd of partly dressed fellows from Upper House. But the smoke which filled the end of the corridor drove them back and the stream from the extinguisher wasted itself against the fast yellowing plaster of the wall. The building was rapidly becoming uninhabitable and, calling Joe from the study, where he was vainly trying to get the study table through the casement, Kenneth made for the stairs. The light at the far end of the corridor shone red and murky through the dense clouds of smoke.
"All out of the building!" cried a voice from below, and the half dozen adventurous spirits remaining in the second floor corridor started down the stairs.
"Do you know how it began?" asked Joe of a boy beside him.
"Yes," was the reply. "King, in 19, was reading in bed with a lamp he has, and he went to sleep and upset it somehow. He got burned, they say."
"Serves him right," muttered some one. Kenneth glanced around and found
Grafton Hyde beside him.
"Hello," said Kenneth.
"Hello," answered Grafton. "Did you save anything?"
"Yes, I guess so," Kenneth replied. "Did you?"
For the moment animosities were forgotten, wiped out of existence by the calamity.