foot into it this time," was Harry's
good-natured comment, as he ran close up alongside.

"Where shall I land you, Blumpo?" questioned Jerry Upton.

"Anywhere but near the boathouse," returned Blumpo, with a shiver that was
not brought on entirely by his involuntary bath. "If you land me there the
fellows won't give me a chance to get out of sight."

"I'll take you up the lake shore if you wish," said Jerry. "I intended to
go up anyway in a row-boat."

"All right, Jerry, do that and I'll be much obliged to you," returned
Blumpo Brown.

"You are going along, aren't you, Harry?" continued Jerry, turning to his
late rival.

"Yes, I want to stop at Mrs. Fleming's cottage," replied Harry Parker.

In a moment more Harry had turned his shell over to old Jack Broxton and
had leaped into a row-boat.

"Ain't you fellows going to try it over again?" asked several on the
shore, anxiously.

"Not now," returned Jerry. Then he went on to Harry, in a lower tone: "I
didn't expect to make a public exhibition of our little trial at speed,
did you?"

"No; not at all. It was a tie, and let it remain so."

Jerry soon left his shell; and then four oars soon took the row-boat far
away from the vicinity of the shore; and while the three boys are on their
way up the lake, let us learn a little more concerning them, especially as
they are to form the all-important characters of this tale of midsummer
adventures.

Jerry Upton was the only son of a well-to-do farmer, whose farm of one
hundred acres lay just beyond the outskirts of Lakeview, and close to the
lake shore. Jerry was a scholar at the Lakeview Academy, and did but
little on the farm, although among the pupils he was often designated as
Cornfield.

Harry Parker was the oldest boy in the Parker family, which numbered two
boys and four girls. Harry's father was a shoe manufacturer, whose large
factory was situated in Lakeview, and at which nearly a fourth of the
working population of the town found employment.

It had been a singular incident which had brought the two boys together
and made them firm friends. Both had been out skating on the lake the
winter before, when Harry had lost his skate and gone down headlong
directly in the track of a large ice-boat, which was coming on with the
speed of a breeze that was almost a hurricane.

To the onlookers it seemed certain that Harry must be struck and killed by
the sharp prow of the somewhat clumsy craft. But in that time o