They shoved the ball down the slope. On and on it rolled, gaining in momentum and size with every bound.
“Look at it!” cried George. “Say, it sure is going!”
“And it’s getting as big as a house!” excitedly shouted Bert.
“It will roll all the way across the lake,” said Tom, for the frozen body of water was at the foot of the hill, and it did seem as though the snowball had momentum enough to carry it over the ice.
A moment later the ball was at the foot of the hill, and rolling along with increasing speed. And then, so suddenly that the boys were startled with fear, something happened.
Out on the ice drove a horse and a cutter, containing a man. He had left the road and taken a short cut across the ice. And now he was directly in the path of the immense, rolling snowball.
“Stop! Stop!” cried Tom Fairfield. “Look out!”
But it was too late to stop, even if the man in the cutter had heard him.
On rushed the great ball directly toward the horse and vehicle.
CHAPTER II
A SURPRISE
“Say, it’s going to hit him, sure as fate!” cried Tom.
“No help for it,” half-groaned Jack.
“And there will be some smash!” murmured Bert. “Oh, what did you do it for, George?”
“Me do it? Why, say, you fellows had as much to do with it as I did! I didn’t do it all!” and the smaller lad looked indignantly at his companions.
“Come on!” cried Tom, as he started on a run down the snowy side of the hill.
The others followed.
“We can’t do anything!” shouted Jack.
“Of course not,” agreed Bert. “By the time we get there – ”
He did not finish the sentence. All this while the big snowball had been rushing on. The man in the cutter had seen it, but too late. He tried to whip up the horse and get out of the way, but even as Bert spoke the mass of snow struck fairly between the horse and cutter.
In an instant the vehicle was overturned.
The boys, running to the rescue, had a confused vision of a man flying out to one side, head first, toward a snowbank. They also saw the horse rear up on his hind legs, struggle desperately to retain his balance and then, with a fierce leap, break loose from the cutter and run on, free, across the ice.
As the boys hastened on, they saw the man slowly pick himself up out of the snowbank, and gaze wonderingly about him, as if trying to fathom what had happened, whether it had been an earthquake or an avalanche. Indeed, so large was the snowball, and so strong was the force of it, for it had gained speed by the rush down the steep hill, that it really was a small avalanche.
The ball had split into several pieces on hitting the cutter, the shafts of which were broken and splintered, showing how the horse had been able to free himself.
“We’ll have to – to apologize,” murmured Tom, as he and his companions kept on toward the man who was now gazing down disconsolately at the ruin wrought.
“Yes, I guess we will,” agreed Jack. “We – why, Cæsar’s corn-plasters!” he cried. “Look who it is – Professor Skeel!”
“The old tyrant of Elmwood Hall!” murmured Bert. “Who’d have thought it?”
“Now we are in for it,” added Tom, grimly.
“Burton Skeel!” said George in a whisper as he caught sight of the angry-looking man, gazing at his smashed cutter and staring off over the ice in the direction taken by the runaway horse. “Skeel, the man who made so much trouble for Tom Fairfield. And we upset him! Oh – good-night!”
Those of you who have read the first volume of this series, entitled “Tom Fairfield’s Schooldays,” do not need to be introduced to Professor Skeel. The unpopular instructor of Elmwood Hall, where Tom and his chums attended, had been the cause of a rebellion, in which Tom was a sort of leader, and, later, a pacifier. Tom Fairfield, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Brokaw Fairfield, of Briartown, N. J., had made himself popular soon after coming to Elmwood, where he had been sent to board while his parents went to Australia about some property matters.
And now to find that the man upset from his cutter was this same unpopular teacher, Professor Skeel, was enough to give pause to any set of lads.
But Tom Fairfield was no coward. He proved that when the Silver Star was wrecked, an account of which you may read of in my second volume, called “Tom Fairfield at Sea,” for the days that followed the foundering of that vessel were trying ones indeed, and the dreary days spent in an open boat, when Mr. Skeel proved himself not only a coward, but almost a scoundrel, showed Tom fully what sort of a man the professor was.
Tom finally reached Australia, and set out on another voyage in time to rescue his parents from some savages on one of the Pacific islands. So it was such qualities as these, and those developed when Tom had other adventures, set forth in the third book, “Tom Fairfield in Camp,” that made our hero keep on instead of turning back when he found what had happened to Mr. Skeel.
In camp Tom and his chums succeeded in clearing up the mystery of the old mill, though for a time it seemed that they were doomed to failure. But Tom was not one to give up easily, and this, I think, was more fully shown, perhaps, in the volume immediately preceding this, called “Tom Fairfield’s Pluck and Luck.”
True, Tom did have “luck,” but, after all, what is luck but hard work turned to the best advantage? Almost any chap can have luck if he works hard, and takes advantage of every opportunity.
And now, after many weeks of tribulations, Tom found himself at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, and he and his chums had in prospect a very enjoyable time.
But just at the present moment they would have given up part of anticipated pleasures, I believe, not to have had the snowball accident happen.
“It is Skeel,” murmured Tom, as though at first he had doubted the evidence of his own eyes.
“Of course it is,” said Jack.
“And we’re in for trouble, or I miss my guess,” added Bert.
“I wonder what in the world he is doing in these parts?” came from George. “You thought you’d seen the last of him, didn’t you, Tom, after the wreck of the Silver Star?”
“I certainly did.”
“And yet he bobs up again,” went on George. “What does he want? Is he trying to get back on the faculty of Elmwood Hall?”
No one answered his questions, nor did Tom, or any of the others, rebuke Why for his queries. They had too much else to think about.
“Well, young men, well!” began Professor Skeel in his pompous voice. “Well, are you responsible for this?”
“I – I’m afraid we are,” said Tom. He did not add “sir,” as once he would have done. He had lost the little respect he had for the former teacher, and when a man loses the respect of a manly youth, it is not good for that man.
“Humph! Yes, you certainly have done mischief enough,” went on Mr. Skeel, in snarling tones. “My cutter is broken, I am thrown out, and may have sustained there are no telling what injuries, my horse has run away and may be killed, and you stand there like – like blithering idiots!” he cried, with something of his old, objectionable, schoolroom manner.
“We – we didn’t mean to,” said Tom.
“We just made a big snowball and rolled it down,” George said, determined to take his share of the blame.
“Hum! Yes, so I see – and so I felt, young men!” cried the irate man, as he brushed the snow off his garments.
The