ch had his plans for making fourteen red-letter days out
of the two weeks they were to spend at home. Peaceful thoughts filled
the hearts of most of them, but B.J. dreamed chiefly of the furious
conflicts that awaited him on the lake, which had been the scene of
many an adventure in his mettlesome ice-boat.

The last days crawled painfully by for all of them, and the Dozen grew
more and more meek as they became more and more homesick for their
mothers. They were boys indeed now, and until they reached the old
town; but there there was such a cordial reception for them from
the whole village--fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, best girls,
cronies, and even dogs--that by the time they had reached the
club-house which had been built by their own efforts, and in which
they were recorded on a beautiful panel as the charter members, they
felt that they were aged, white-haired veterans returning to some
battle-field where they were indeed famous.

A reception was given in their honor at the club-house, and Tug made
a speech, and the others gave various more or less ridiculous and
impressive exhibitions of their grandeur.

After a day or two of this glory, however, they became fellow-citizens
with the rest of the villagers, and were content to sit around the
club-room and tell stories of the grand old days when the Lakerim
Athletic Club had no club-house to cover its head--the days when they
fought so hard for admission to the Tri-State Interscholastic League
of Academies. They were, to tell the truth, though, just a little
disappointed, in the inside of their hearts, that the successors left
behind to carry on the club were doing prosperously, winning athletic
victories, and paying off the debt in fine style--quite as well as if
they themselves had been there.

The most popular of the story-tellers was B.J., whose favorite and
most successful yarn was the account of the great ice-boat adventure,
when the hockey team was wrecked upon Buzzard's Rock, and spent the
night in the snow-drifts, with the blizzard howling outside. The
memory of that terrible escape made the blood run cold in the veins of
the other members of the club; but it aroused in B.J. only a new and
irresistible desire to be off again upon the same adventure-hunt.

Now, B.J.'s father was an enthusiastic sailor--fortunately, not so
rash a sailor as his son, but quite as great a lover of a "flowing
sail." Wind-lover as he was, he could not spend a winter idl