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Walter and Eugene were students at the Bellville Academy—or rather they had been until a few weeks ago when the Fire King stepped in and destroyed the buildings, and gave the scholars a long vacation. Our heroes regarded this as a great calamity, and so did every one of the students, for they loved the Academy and all its surroundings. It was no wonder that they held the institution in high esteem, for the faculty were men who understood the nature of boys, and knowing how to combine profit with pleasure, they had made the school a sort of modern Athens, where muscles were cultivated as well as brains. So varied were the exercises and amusements that the most exacting students could not fail to find something to interest them. For the sober, studious ones who preferred quiet sport, there was the yacht club, and also the classes in Geology, Botany, and Natural History, the members of which spent a portion of each school term camping out in the woods with their professors; and for the active boys, who delighted in violent exercises, there were ball clubs, boat clubs, a gymnasium, and boxing and fencing masters. Walter and Eugene were lonesome in their country home, and looked forward with impatience to the coming summer, when the new buildings would be ready for occupation. Uncle Dick, however, hinted that it would be a long time before they, or any of the members of the Sportsman’s Club, would enter the new academy as students; but when the boys asked him what he meant, he poked them in the ribs with his finger, looked very wise, and said nothing.