LITMIR.BIZ

      RULE OR RUIN

      "Hi! there, Frank! Don't you want to take a little spin with me aboard my new ice-boat?"

      "Why, hello Lanky, is that the Humming Bird you've been building on the sly?" and Frank Allen as he spoke, looked up from his task of locking a glittering skate to his shoe.

      "Ain't she a corker, though?" demanded the proud owner and builder, Lanky Wallace, as he sprawled upon the framework of his strange craft, with its sails flapping in the breeze.

      "Well, honest Injun, Lanky," observed Frank, with a smile, "I can't say that she's a beauty so far as looks go; but I like her lines, and it strikes me that she ought to be a hustler to get along."

      "That's just what she is, a regular screamer. I'm sorry I called her by such a modest little name, ​for she deserves a better. Drop aboard, and see if she doesn't outshine the boat I made last winter," continued the ice sailor, eagerly.

      "Sorry, but another time will have to do," replied Frank, seeming to hesitate as though deciding between pleasure and duty.

      "Why not now?" tempted the other, artfully; "the sun is good for nearly an hour, and there's more'n half a moon up yonder. Say yes, Frank. It's seldom we have the ice like this; and there's some breeze, though not all I'd like. Come right along!"

      "The trouble is," explained Frank, with a sigh, "I've just got to skate up to Clifford before dark. The athletic committee of Columbia High had a meeting this afternoon, and commissioned me to carry a challenge up to the boys of Clifford High. So you see I must be off."

      "What's that? A challenge for what? Don't tell me we're going to rub up against those nifty hockey boys, who have cleaned out everything on the Harrapin these last four years, until they crow like the cock of the walk?" and Lanky threw up both hands to indicate intense excitement.

      "That's just what it means; and now you understand what all that practice with our team has been standing for," returned the boy who sat on the bank, as he again bent over his skates.

      ​"But hold on," cried Lanky, "what's to hinder our whirling up the river to Clifford on this same contraption? Why, we can beat your best time on runners to flinders. No more arguing now, but hop aboard, and we're off!"

      Frank looked up, gauged the breeze, glanced along the smooth stretch of ice on which some dozens of Columbia boys and girls were gliding hither and thither; and immediately unfastened the one skate he had clamped tight.

      "I'll go you, old fellow! It's too good a chance to be lost; and I'm anxious to find out whether this new boat is better than the old Hurricane you had last winter. Make room there!" with which remark he cleared the distance separating the shore line from the ice-boat, and threw himself down beside the skipper.

      As they began to move off under the influence of the dying breeze a number of the skaters gave utterance to loud cries, and made out as if about to give them a race. The fleetest of them quickly fell astern, however, and presently a bend in the river shut them completely out of sight.

      While Frank and his chum are thus whirling up the Harrapin River toward the town of Clifford, some miles above, it may pay us to cast just a fleeting glance backward, and see who these lads were, ​and what aims and ambitions influenced their actions.

      The Harrapin boasted of three progressive towns along its banks, each ranging from seven to twenty thousand inhabitants. Columbia was the largest, though Bellport some eight miles further down the river possessed numerous factories, and was a business community.

      Each town had its own high school, that of Columbia being especially famous on account of its almost perfect equipment. Between the scholars of the three seats of learning there naturally arose a most persistent rivalry, and from year to year this was carried on in all the sports which up-to-date American boys enjoy.

      In the first volume of

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