In his secret heart was a lively desire to see just what they did to Milo Barrus, if he _should_ continue to spell God with a little g on his very death-bed--that is, if he could see it without disadvantage to himself: But then, you could save that up, because you _must_ die sometime, like Xerxes the Great; and meantime, there was the life of evil now opening wide to the vision with all enticing refreshments.
First, it meant no school.

He had ceased to picture relief in this matter by the school-house burning some morning, preferably a Monday morning, one second after school had taken in.

For a month he had daily dramatised to himself the building's swift destruction amid the kind and merry flames.

But Allan, to whom he had one day hinted the possibility of this gracious occurrence, had reminded him brutally that they would probably have school in the Methodist church until a new school-house could be built.

For Allan loved his school and his teacher.
But a life of evil promised other joys besides this negative one of no school.