mother was dead; and all these things had happened years before
they had been sent to boarding school.

Randolph Rover was an eccentric but kind hearted man, given over
entirely to scientific farming, of which, so far, sad to relate,
he had made a rather costly failure. He spent all of his time
over his agricultural books and in the fields, and was glad
enough to get the boys off his hands by sending them to the
military school.

When vacation came he wondered what he should do with them during
the summer, but the problem was solved by the boys, who hated to
think of remaining on the farm, and who proposed a trip up and down
the Hudson River and through Long Island Sound, providing their
guardian would furnish the boat and bear the expense of the outing.
The outcome was the chartering of the yacht Spray, and all of the
boys took lessons in sailing from an old tar who knew exactly how
such a craft should be handled.

At Putnam Hall the boys had made a number of friends, and also
several enemies, and had had several surprising adventures, as my
old readers already know. Who their friends and their enemies
were, and what further adventures were in store for the three
brothers, I will leave for the pages following to reveal. At
present let us turn our attention to the boat which seemed on
the point of running down the Spray.

Like their own craft, the other boat carried but a single mast.
But the stick was at least ten feet longer than the mast of the
Spray, and the boat was correspondingly larger in every respect.