Later in the week, after the boys had tried the racer out to their complete satisfaction, Dan remained up one evening long after his brother had gone to bed. Billy fell asleep seeing Dan bent over certain drawings he had made, and it must have been midnight when the younger boy was startled out of his sound sleep by a sudden sound.
There was Dan hopping about the room in a grotesque, stocking-footed dance.
“What under the sun’s the matter with you, Dan?” gasped the younger boy.
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” ejaculated his brother, snapping his fingers and continuing the dance.
“Stop it! stop it, I say!” commanded Billy. “You’ll have mother in here. My goodness! can’t you break out with the measles—or whatever you’ve got—at a decent hour?”
“It’s something bigger than the measles, Billy,” chuckled Dan, falling into his chair before the table again. “Look here.”
“Those old plans——” began Billy, sleepily.
“These _new_ plans, you mean,” responded his brother, vigorously. “I tell you I’ve struck pay dirt.”
The words stung Billy into a keener appreciation of his brother’s excitement. Awakened from a sound sleep, he had been rather dazed at first. Now he knew what Dan meant.
“You—got—it?” he gasped, stifling a mighty yawn. “Figured it all out?”
“I’m going to rig a motor-driven sprocket wheel arrangement that will push a car over the ice at good speed—yes, sir!”
“Going to hitch it to the _Fly-up-the-Creek_?” demanded Billy, eagerly, bending over the papers Dan had prepared.
“No. That’s where I was wrong. We’ll build an entirely new iceboat. See here?” and he at once began explaining to his brother the idea that developed—as it seemed—almost of itself since Billy had gone to sleep three hours before.
“It sure looks good!” exclaimed the younger boy, admiringly, when Dan had concluded. “You _have_ got it, Dan! And the boys will be crazy over it.”
“We’ll just keep it to ourselves, you know,” warned Dan. “Mr. Robert Darringford is going to offer a handsome prize for the fastest iceboat at the regatta we’re going to hold. Don’t you know that?”
“Then we’ll just keep still about this scheme. Some of the parts will have to be made in the machine shops, you know. And some parts we’ll get old Troutman, at Compton, to make. You remember him?”