Explore "Through by Daylight" by Oliver Optic on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The appearance of the dummy, going at full speed, filled me with anxiety. I was sure that something was wrong, for I knew that Major Toppleton was not stirring at that hour in the morning, and that he could not have given any one permission to take out the car without telling me of it. I hastened up to the engine-house; but it was empty, and added nothing to my meagre stock of ideas on the vexed subject. The dummy was gone, and that was all I knew about it.
The Institute buildings were only a short distance from the engine-house, and I next went there in search of information. The students were engaged, in large numbers, in their sports. Indeed, there were so many of them present that the suspicion I had entertained that some of the boys had gone on a lark in the dummy seemed to be disarmed. Still, a dozen or twenty of them would not be missed in the crowd, and it was possible that this number were in mischief, though I thought, if it were so, they had chosen a singular time of day for it.