The Safety First Club and the Flood

It was not a cheerful afternoon. Overhead were heavy, gray clouds, and underfoot was snow, long fallen, crusted by alternate thawing and freezing, dingy with the queer winter du...

This open invasion of the privacy of the club was something wholly outside their experience. A boy who didn’t belong might call there, of course, if he wished to see one of the...

Sam Parker was disposed to think little and say less of the incident of the runaway horse. He had come out of the affair with some credit and a slightly sprained wrist, but he m...

Sam took the matter of Mrs. Grant’s gratitude and the promised pie much to heart. He was, as it happened, a sensitive fellow, and he was of the age at which dread of ridicule is...

The morning dawned clear and still. Over night there had been a fall of several inches of snow, freshening the white of the winter landscape. Even the roadways were not dingy no...

It was Step who spoke thus, addressing Poke and Sam and Varley, as they stood grouped in the road before the house in which they had left the injured man. Nearly an hour had pas...

The Shark was out of humor. He sat in a corner of the club-room, glowering through his spectacles at his fellow members, and quite ignoring the chess-board on the table beside him.

Ordinarily, Sam might have thought little of Poke’s mysterious hint, for Poke’s fancy was lively at times, but the bearing of that well-fed youth continued to suggest consciousn...

The disastrous sequel to Poke’s dinner party was the chief topic of talk among the Safety First Club, with Poke himself in a state of mind which can be more easily imagined than...

“A little outing will be good for you, Sam,” said he. “You’ve been attending pretty strictly to business lately, and it’s time for a break in the routine. By the way, your good...

Being a youth in full possession of his faculties and powers of observation, Paul Varley understood perfectly that there was something curious in the fashion in which Step and P...

Probably everybody notices, from time to time, how things which would seem to be trifling in themselves bring about results which are anything but trifling. Paul Varley’s intere...

Varley splashed after his leader. No other word would quite describe the sort of journey he made at the heels of the Shark; for as soon as they had descended from the slight ris...

“I tell you, it’s the only way. Don’t you suppose I’ve figured and figured on what to do? Well, I have; and there’s just one answer. I can’t dodge it, and I won’t try. I’ve got...

Paul Varley was sorely shaken by his plunge into the depths of the ancient cellar. He struck its floor so heavily, indeed, that the breath seemed to be driven from his body.

“Here, now, boys, fit yourselves out,” she directed. “Or, if you can’t fit yourselves, come the nearest you can. Most of these things Mr. Grant has used one time or another, but...

“Boys, one o’ them dams up-river must ’a’ gone out! That was the first wave of the rush that ’most caught us. There’s a lot o’ water still comin’ along, but ’tain’t quite’s high...

The hallway of the ancient structure was curiously small in contrast with the big room the boys had just left. It was, indeed, little more than a box of an entry, with a winding...

It will be recalled that in the division of forces for the search Herman Boyd and the Trojan were detailed to follow the road down the valley, making inquiries at each house and...

Lon’s floor-board gave material for three rough-and-ready paddles, short, awkward to handle, yet more or less serviceable. Lon himself kept one, Orkney took another, and Varley...

The result of the historical essay competition was a foregone conclusion. Under the conditions, by which facts counted for more than form of expression, the production of the Sa...