see anything--much," she
said. "Come on, Bess! let's try and paddle out to them."

"And have them swamp our canoes if they tried to climb in," said Miss
Lavine. "No, thanks!"

"Come on!" cried Frank, joining in. "We ought to try and help."

"What's the use?" drawled Bessie, walking away. "And you're mean not to
let me have the glass, Wyn."

"Oh, come on and take it!" gasped Wyn.

"Don't want it now," snapped Bess, who took offense rather easily at
times. "You can keep the old thing."

Wyn sighed with relief. Then she whirled quickly and ran down to the
beach, with Frank right at her heels. They were the only two girls who
launched their canoes. Wyn had brought the glass with her.

"Now I _know_ Bess won't see him," she exclaimed, almost in a
whisper.

"What's that?" demanded Frankie, who overheard. "What do you mean, Wyn?"

"I believe that is Mr. Lavine out there," said the captain of the
Go-Aheads. "Oh, Frank! paddle hard!"

And it _was_ Mr. Lavine. He had hired this little gasoline boat,
with its owner to run it, at Denton, and had paid the owner an extra
five-dollar bill to force the boat to its very highest speed (and that
wasn't much) all the way up the Wintinooski. Mr. Lavine was in a hurry;
he was in too much of a hurry, as it proved.

Somewhere off Meade's Forge he began to smell the gasoline all too
strongly. There was a leak somewhere; but the boat kept on.

Finally even the reckless driver grew frightened and shut off the spark.

"There's a leak, boss," he drawled. "Sure as aigs is aigs!"

Mr. Lavine tore up one of the boards under his feet in the cockpit. A
man with half an eye could have seen the scum of gasoline on the bilge
in the cockpit.

"Leak!" he exclaimed, wrathfully. "I should say you had been using the
boat's bottom for a gasoline tank. Why! we might have been blown up a
dozen times."

"I expect the leak's in the feed pipe," confessed the boatman. "But I
thought I'd got her fixed las' week."

"You've got _us_ fixed," snapped Mr. Lavine. "'Way out here in the
middle of Lake Honotonka, too--and I in a hurry."

"Wal," said the man, "I'll putty up the leak and you see if you kin swab
out the boat. I wouldn't dare try and ignite her again with so much
gasoline around."

"I--should--say--not!" gasped the gentleman, and removed his coat,
rolled up his sleeves and his trousers, and set to work.

They both labored like beavers for half an hour and then the boatman did
the very sil