"Hello! I guess it must have begun to snow again," cried Randy Rover, mischievously.
"I'll 'snow' you!" retorted Glutts. "I guess you fellows are afraid to race. That's why you are cutting up."
"Never mind—race them anyway, Bill," came from a small, pasty-faced youth, who was usually called Codfish on account of his broad mouth. "Go ahead and show 'em what your new bobsled can do."
"That's the talk!" cried another cadet, a newcomer at the academy. "Show 'em that the Yellow Streak can lick anything on this hill."
"That's a dream that will never come true!" cried Spouter Powell. "Come ahead, Jack, let's start this race," he added to the oldest Rover boy.
The scene was Long Hill, a rise of ground located about midway between Colby Hall Military Academy and the town of Haven Point. There was something of a wagon road leading up the hill from the main highway which skirted Clearwater Lake, and this road had been converted by the cadets of the academy into a slide for their bobsleds.
From the top of the hill the slide ran down and over two smaller hills, then crossed the main highway and shot down another road onto the lake, which at this season of the year was covered with ice.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and, as usual, the cadets of the military academy were making the most of their off time, some with bobsleds and other with ordinary handsleds and what were locally called "bread shovels."
For some weeks before this the boys, as well as many other residents in that vicinity, had enjoyed skating on the lake. But a rather wet snow had fallen which the wind had been unable to sweep away, and consequently skating became a thing of the past. Then the lads turned to their bobsleds, the Rovers getting out one they had used the season before. This they painted and varnished very carefully and christened the Blue Moon.
"Because, you see," explained Randy, with a wink, "it's only once in a blue moon that she'll be beaten."