When the Alaska claims business had been finally adjusted in a satisfactory manner, and Squire Lemington could once more remember that he had not seen either of his boys for some days, he became quite alarmed. And it was at this time that the artful Buck sent a note by a special messenger, offering to bring Billy home if his father would forget all about the punishment he had threatened.
Of course he won his point, and in a short time was just the same bully about Riverport as of yore; because it is next to impossible for such a fellow to reform.
Of course while Winter held the country round about the three river towns in its grasp, the frozen waters of the pretty Mohunk furnished plenty of sport, both vigorous and healthful.
And it goes without saying that the intense rivalry existing between the schools kept pace with the seasons. There were skating matches, challenges between the proud owners of new bobsleds, and even class spreads, with possibly a dance in some distant barn, to which the girls were conveyed by their attendants in all manner of sleighs, and with an elderly lady to add dignity to occasion.
In all of these events we may be sure that Fred Fenton took his part with the same manly spirit that, as has been shown in these stories of the school struggles, actuated his behavior at all times.
He was not always victor, and more than once tasted the sting of defeat; but Fred could give and take; and he knew that others deserved to win as well as he did himself. But he was satisfied to enjoy the keen rivalry that accompanies clean sport, and the very first to give the winner a shout of congratulation.
In the early Spring some of the boys made their way up to the haunted mill; for they remembered that the pond used to hold some gamey bass in those days of old when they regularly played around that section.
They found that during a winter's storm the old building had finally yielded to the war of the elements. It was lying in ruins; and thus another old landmark disappeared from the region of the Mohunk.
Colon recalled his strange experience at the time he was kidnapped, and carried away to the old mill by several disguised boys. Of course every one knew now that these fellows had been Buck and several of his cronies; and that their object had been simply a desire to cripple the Riverport athletic track team, because the committee had concluded that none of them was a fit subject for entry.
And they had come very nearly doing it too. Only for the energy which Fred Fenton had shown in following up the slender clues left behind, Colon might have been detained there, his whereabouts unknown, until the meet was a thing of the past, and the victory gone to Mechanicsburg.