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 boys had not yet gotten over the surprise of identifying Professor
Skeel. They could not understand it.
“We will do anything we can to make amends,” Tom said, slinging his
skates over his shoulder with a jangling of steel. “We will try to
catch your horse, and we can get you another cutter. We are----”
Something in Tom’s voice caused the man to look up quickly. As he
did so Tom noticed that his right ear appeared as though it had been
recently injured. The lower part was torn and hung down below the other
lobe.
“Ha! So it’s you, is it!” fairly snarled Mr. Skeel. “It’s you, Tom
Fairfield?”
“Yes, Mr. Skeel. And I can only say how sorry I am----”
“Don’t tell me how sorry you are!” interrupted the former teacher, in
a voice filled with passion. “I don’t want to listen to you. I’ve had
enough of you. Don’t you dare to address me!
“This was done on purpose. It was a deliberate attempt to injure me,
perhaps kill me, for all I know. But I will not submit. I will at
once go to town and cause your arrest, Tom Fairfield. The arrest of
yourself, and those rascals with you. I’ll have you all arrested.”
George turned pale under his ruddy cheeks. He was not afraid, but he
was thinking of the disgrace. But Tom Fairfield was master of the
situation.
“Oh, I wouldn’t have anyone arrested if I were you, Mr. Skeel,” he
said, in easy tones.
“Yes, I shall, too!” blustered the man. “I’ll have you all arrested!
The idea of rolling a snowball on me and almost killing me. I’ll have
everyone of you arrested.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Tom said. “You forget that little matter of the
forgery, Mr. Skeel. That indictment is still hanging over you, I
believe. And if you were to go to the authorities, it might come out,
and there would be some other arrests than ours. So if I were you----”
He did not need to finish. Mr. Skeel turned pale and uttered an
exclamation under his breath.
At that moment George created a diversion by crying:
“Here comes your horse back.”