y, and
turned his attention to ice-boating.

He owned a beautiful modern vessel made of basswood, butternut, and
pine, with rigging all of steel, and a runner-plank as springy as an
umbrella frame. She carried no more than four hundred square feet of
sail; but when he gave her the whip, and let her take to her heels,
she outran the fleetest wind that ever swept the lake.

And she skipped and sported along near the railroad track, where the
express-train raced in vain with her; for she could make her sixty
miles an hour or more without gasping for breath.

She was named _Greased Lightning_.

Now, B.J.'s father had ample cause to be suspicious of that young
man's discretion, and he never permitted him to take the boat out
alone, good sailor as he knew his son to be; so B.J. had to content
himself with parties of boys and girls hilarious with the cold and
speed, and wrapped up tamely in great blankets, under the charge of
his father, who was a more than cautious sailor, being as wise as he
was old, and seeing the foolishness of those pleasures which depend
only on risking bone and body.

But B.J. was wretched, and chafed under the restraint of such
respectable amusement--with girls, too!

And when, in the midst of the holidays, his father was called out
of town, B.J. went to bed, and could hardly fall asleep under the
conspiracies he began to form for eloping on one last escapade with
the ice-boat.

He woke soon after daybreak, the next morning, and hurried to his
window. There he found a gale of wind blowing and lashing the earth
with a furious rain. The wind he received with welcoming heart, but
the rain sent terror there; for it told him that the ice would soon
disappear, and he would be sent back to Kingston Academy, with never a
chance to let loose the _Greased Lightning_.

"It is now or never!" mumbled B.J., clenching his teeth after the
manner of all well-regulated desperados.

XVIII

He sneaked into his clothes, and descended the cold, creaking
staircase in his stocking-feet. Then he put on his rubber boots, and
stole out of the house like a burglar.

The wind would have wrecked any umbrella alive; but he cared naught
for the rain, and hurried down the street where the Twins were
sleeping the sleep of the righteous. He threw pebbles at their windows
till they were awakened; and after a proper amount of deliberation in
which each requested the other to go to the window, both went hand in
hand