certainly beats me!” he exclaimed. “What do you think he means, Mother?”
“I am sure I do not know. But we must find out about him. He ought not to be wandering around alone.”
“On a night like this, too!” from Dan.
“Oh, we’ll put him up,” said Billy, quickly. “Won’t we, Mom?”
“Surely, my son,” agreed his mother.
“Maybe he is some kind of a foreigner,” said Carrie, the boys’ sister.
“Sounds more like hog-Latin,” chuckled Billy, to his brother.
“Sh! he can understand English well enough, even if he doesn’t speak it plainly,” said the older boy.
“Guess you are right there,” agreed Billy.
The entire family was deeply interested in the youth. He had been hungry indeed; and when supper was finished he appeared sleepy, too.
“No knowing how far he had tramped in the snow and storm before you boys ran across him,” Mr. Speedwell observed.
“We didn’t exactly run across him,” Billy said, with a chuckle. “But we come pretty near it, Dad. Too near for comfort.”
At any rate, Mrs. Speedwell and Carrie prepared a room for the stranger. He had a suit of Dan’s pajamas to sleep in, and little ’Dolph had become so friendly with him that he insisted on the visitor’s taking to bed with him one of Adolph’s newest and most precious toys – an air-gun.
The visitor retired after saying something that must have been a grateful response to Mrs. Speedwell’s kindliness.
“By gracious!” exclaimed Mr. Speedwell, slapping his knee, “that surely sounds like English – only he mumbles it so. Sounds just as though he were tongue-tied.”
“He surely isn’t dumb,” agreed Dan.
“Not at all,” Billy added. “But I never heard anybody as tongue-tied as all that.”
The Speedwells were not late to bed – especially on such a night as this. The wind howled and the snow continued until midnight; but when the alarm clock awoke Billy and Dan in their room at two o’clock, the storm had ceased and a faint strip of moon was struggling amidst the breaking clouds.
The snow was not too deep for the auto-truck, although the brothers could not get over their long route as quickly as usual. School was in session and Dan and Billy put in full time every school day, in spite of the milk delivery.
They were spinning out the river road towards Colonel Sudds’s place, beyond the Darringford Machine Shops, about half past seven, with only a few more customers to deliver to, when Billy caught sight of something on the river that interested him immensely.
“Look at that flyer, Dan!” he cried. “Iceboat, sure as you are an inch high!”
“I’m several feet more than an inch tall, Billy,” chuckled his brother, “so that must be an iceboat and no hallucination.”
“Don’t pull any of the ‘high brow stuff,’ as Biff Hardy calls it,” returned slangy Billy Speedwell. “And tell me, pray, who owns an iceboat around Riverdale?”
“I didn’t even suppose the ice was thick enough to bear a boat,” returned Dan, who was quite as surprised at the appearance of the swooping craft as his brother.
The river bank fell abruptly from the edge of the road. Dan had brought the truck to a halt, for both boys were immensely interested.
Anything that flew like that craft on the ice below, was bound to hold the attention of the brothers. They were well named, their chums at the Riverdale Academy declared. Billy Speedwell had never yet traveled fast enough to suit him, and Dan was just as much of a “speed maniac.”
However, Dan’s natural caution usually kept the brothers from reckless racing of any kind; but they had won prizes and made records with their motorcycles, racing car, and motorboat.
Now they stared hard at the craft flying down the river toward the buildings belonging to the Colasha Boat Club. The ice was firm in patches, but from this height the Speedwells could see that there were open strips of water, yards in width.
The tides did not affect the river much so far from its mouth; yet there was some brine in it and despite the severe cold of the last few days, the ice was not entirely safe.
“Two fellows in her,” announced Billy.
“I see ’em.”
“And just as reckless as they can be. See there! Don’t they see that channel ahead? My goodness, Dan! It’s fifty feet wide if it is a foot!”
“You’re right, Billy; they’re going to have a spill!”
“Worse than that,” cried the younger brother, and he hopped out of his seat. “Come on, Dan! there’s going to be something doing down there in another minute. We’re going to be needed – ”
He halted in his speech, for at that very moment the skimming iceboat shot over the edge of the firm ice, its runners cut through the shell-like crystal beyond, and the heavy body of the boat splashed into the open water.
Its momentum carried it far; but only the front runner hit the ice on the other side of the open channel. The runner slipped under the firm ice, and the careening boat stopped. With a crash heard plainly up on the highroad, the mast went by the board, and the craft and its passengers disappeared under the falling canvas.
CHAPTER II
A BIG IDEA
Dan and Billy Speedwell, now seventeen and sixteen years of age respectively, were, as has been observed, famous in the county as speed experts. In “The Speedwell Boys on Motorcycles” are related several of their first speed trials at the Compton Motordrome and on the road, and in the second volume of the series, “The Speedwell Boys and Their Racing Auto,” is told the winning of a thousand-mile endurance test.
The brothers later obtain possession of a motorboat and adventures connected with the great regatta of the Colasha Boat Club are narrated in “The Speedwell Boys and Their Power Launch,” and in the fourth volume, entitled “The Speedwell Boys in a Submarine,” the brothers are two of an adventurous party that find a submerged wreck and the treasure aboard it.
The boys’ father had been merely a small dairyman and farmer, and the boys had to work hard between school sessions to help him. By certain fortuitous circumstances they had been enabled to obtain motorcycles, a racing auto, and a power launch; but the disposal of the recovered treasure had made the Speedwell family quite independent.
Something like twenty thousand dollars had been wisely invested for Dan and Billy, and in addition they were able to help their father increase his business and give the family many luxuries which had before been beyond their reach.
As we have seen, however, the Speedwells lived plainly and were busy and industrious folk. The brothers went to school faithfully and helped as they had for several years in the delivery of the milk to their father’s customers in and about Riverdale.
The interest of the two boys
