Fame and Fortune Weekly No, 2, Born to Good Luck; or The Boy Who Succeeded, by A Self-Made Man

Issued Weekly—By Subscription $2.50 per year. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1905, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C., by Frank Tousey, Publisher, 24 Union Square, New York.

BORN TO GOOD LUCK;
OR
The Boy Who Succeeded.

“See here, Dick Armstrong; when you’ve taken that water into the house, I want you to clean these. Do you understand?”

The speaker, a sallow-complexioned, overgrown boy of seventeen, threw a pair of mud-bespattered boots at the feet of a sun-burned, healthy-looking lad about a year his junior, while a grin of satisfied malice wrinkled his not over-pleasant features as he thrust his hands into his pockets and started to walk away.

“Who are you talking to, Luke Maslin?” answered Dick, hotly, not relishing the contemptuous manner in which he had been addressed.

“Why, you, of course,” replied Luke, with a sneer, pausing about a yard away. “You’re dad’s boy-of-all-work, aren’t you?”

His clothes were bad, his food scarce, his education neglected, and having arrived at the age of sixteen years he eagerly longed to cut loose from his uncongenial surroundings and make his own way in the world.

If Dick felt obliged to submit to Mr. Maslin’s tyrannical treatment, that was no reason, he contended, why he should allow his son Luke to bully him also.

Although he had never done anything to deserve Luke Maslin’s ill will and often went out of his way to do him a good turn, Luke never lost a chance to make life miserable for Dick.

In fact, all friendly advances on Armstrong’s part, instead of winning his favor, seemed rather to impress him with the idea that Dick was afraid of him, which was far from the truth.

On this particular occasion Dick was not in the best of humor, for Mr. Maslin had just been savagely abusing him because he had taken a longer time than the old man had considered necessary to fetch certain supplies for the store from Slocum, a large town about ten miles distant. So when Luke flung the last remark at him he angrily retorted:

“Do you mean to say that you don’t intend to do anything I ask you to do?”

“I s’pose you’d like me to take my hat off to you, Dick Armstrong, and say please, and all that,” Luke returned, scowling darkly. “It strikes me you’re putting on too many frills for a charity boy.”

This slur, which Dick felt to be utterly undeserved, stung him more than anything Luke could have said.

He turned pale with sudden rage, and his temper burst forth with a violence all the more terrible because held so long in check.

Snatching up the pail of water as though it were a feather, he dashed its contents over his tormentor, drenching him from head to foot.

That Dick Armstrong, the despised factotum of the establishment, would dare to resent any aggression on his part was something Luke had not dreamed of.

Heretofore when he chose to bully his father’s drudge the boy had submitted with the best grace he could.

Now Dick actually had the temerity not only to resist, but to assume the offensive.

After the first sputtering gasp of surprise, Luke recovered himself and sprang at Dick with a howl of the fury that fairly blazed from his eyes.

Realizing that he was in for trouble, Armstrong prepared to defend himself to the best of his ability.

Although his opponent had the advantage of him in height and was furious enough to be dangerous, Dick was not troubled with any misgivings as to the result of a clash between them.

He had every confidence in his own powers, for he was compactly built, was unusually strong for his years, and moreover, being very angry, was reckless of the consequences.

Whether it was that Maslin was naturally clever with his fists or Dick was awkward or slow in putting himself into a posture of defence, certain it is Luke’s right arm went through his opponent’s guard and Dick received a stinging blow on the side of his head that staggered him for a moment.

A second whack, this time on the chest, thoroughly aroused Dick and, seeing his chance, he struck out with all the force he was capable of and caught Luke full on the nose.

His head went back with a jerk, he slipped on the grass, and was down in a moment, the blood flowing freely from his injured organ.

Contrary to Dick’s expectations, Luke made no effort to get up and resume the battle.

Whatever satisfaction his opponent felt at such a decisive result was dissipated in a moment by an unexpected whack on the ear from behind, and turning to confront this new danger he found himself face to face with Silas Maslin, who was in a towering rage.

“He struck me first,” Dick answered doggedly, rubbing his ear, for the slap had been no gentle one.

“What’s that? Didn’t I see you fling that bucket of water over him, you little villain?”

“Don’t you dare talk back to me in that fashion, or I’ll flay you within an inch of your life! Go into the store at once!”

That was an indignity Dick would not have submitted to from any person, not even from Silas Maslin, much as he held him in awe.

The boy was glad to avail himself of the chance of getting beyond his tyrant’s reach, and was presently drawing a quart of molasses for one of the customers of the establishment.

Mr. Maslin kept a small general store at Cobham’s Corner, on the outskirts of the village of Walkhill, in the State of New York.

The building stood within a few yards of the Erie Canal, facing the country road, which at this point crossed the narrow waterway by means of a stout wooden bridge.

The houses that constituted the village were much scattered, and owing to the heavy growth of trees not one of them could be seen from the store; but by standing on the centre of the bridge the short, stumpy steeple of the small, wooden church could just be made out looming up through the topmost branches in the near distance.

The post-office was located at the store, and the farmers for miles around came here for their mail and to replenish their supplies from Mr. Maslin’s stock of goods, which consisted of about everything needed by the little community, from a needle to a cultivator.

Mr. Maslin’s household consisted of his wife, a sour-faced woman on the shady side of forty; his son Luke; John Huskins, a hired man, who attended to the main part of the work in the fields—for Silas Maslin had some forty acres under cultivation—and Dick Armstrong, who helped in the store when necessary, did the chores, and assisted Huskins.

He went to school as long as school kept, took part in all the village sports, visited his schoolmates, attended all the social gatherings he felt disposed to join, and carried his head pretty high generally.

He attended school when Silas Maslin chose to let him do so, under which circumstances his attendance was decidedly irregular.

For the larger part of his time from daylight to dark he was kept on the hustle, as Mr. Maslin was never at a loss to find something for him to do.

He was a good-looking boy, naturally bright, was obliging and polite to everybody with whom he came in contact, and consequently was well liked by everybody in the district, and was an especial favorite with the girls, who when they came to the store for mail or to purchase something preferred to have him wait upon them.

As Luke was ambitious to shine with the fair sex himself, he resented their partiality for Dick, and as he couldn’t very well get square with the young ladies, he vented his ill humor and spite on the object of their attention.

As the customer departed with the jug of molasses, a lad named Joe Fletcher entered the store.

“What!” exclaimed Dick, his face clouding. “You don’t mean to say you’re going away?”

“Yes. I left Boggs for good a couple of hours ago. He’s a hard, cruel, grasping tyrant—that’s what he is. You know I threatened to cut loose from him weeks ago, but somehow I didn’t seem to be able to muster up the backbone to do it. But it’s all over now. He beat me black and blue with a whip this morning because one of the cows broke down the corner of the pasture fence and got into the truck patch. I think he’d have killed me only I hit him over the head with the handle of a rake. Then I got my clothes and ran away.”

He felt sad at the thought of losing the best friend he had in the neighborhood.

It is true he had only known Joe Fletcher five months, which was about the length of time Joe had been working for Farmer Boggs, but a natural sympathy had drawn the two boys together.

Both early in life had been thrown upon their own resources, and both were subservient to hard taskmasters, though if there was any choice in the matter, Silas Maslin was perhaps a shade better than Nathan Boggs.

The latter was notorious throughout the county for the way he treated his hired help, particularly if that help happened to be a boy.

Boggs’ method was to hire a stout boy or an able-bodied, newly arrived foreigner for a period of six months, with the understanding that if the hand quit work before the end of the stipulated term of service he was to forfeit all his pay.

The farmer then managed to make things so hard for his help as the weeks went by that they found the place simply unendurable and were glad to disappear of a sudden without making any very serious demand for what was due them.

Fletcher had managed to weather the ills that clung about Boggs’ farm for five months, for he was blessed with a good temper and much patience, and Nathan, fearing the boy would last the limit and that he would be obliged to pay him the sum of $60 for which he had contracted, adopted a specially rigorous line of conduct toward him, which culminated that morning with a most inhuman beating, after which Joe gave up the struggle.

“I haven’t decided yet but the canal-boat Minnehaha is taking on a load of shingles at Norton’s Lock, a few miles above, and Captain Beasley told me he’d take me down to New York if I wanted to go.”

“I’m sick of this place. They treat me like a dog, and I won’t stand it much longer. Had a run-in with Luke a little while ago.”

“I don’t see that it’s doing you any good to hang on here,” said Joe. “Maslin hasn’t any claim on you, has he?”

“Not a bit; it’s all the other way. He hasn’t paid me a cent all these years I’ve been working for him. All I’ve ever got has been the clothes he grudgingly gave me—none of the best, at that—and my board, and I guess you know what sort of a table they set here.”

“I’ve heard enough from you to make me believe it isn’t much of an improvement on Boggs’ bill of fare—and that’s about the worst ever!”

“You never told me how you came to live with the Maslins,” said Joe, curiously.

“I asked Mr. Maslin and his wife a number of times, but they never would give me any satisfaction. About two months ago I was up in the garret one rainy Sunday afternoon, and I found an old diary in which Mr. Maslin kept a record of important matters in which he was interested when we lived up in New Hampshire some twelve years ago. I’ve a faint recollection myself of the farm he owned in the neighborhood of a place called Franconia. In this diary I found a long entry relating to myself.”

“Well, I guess I was. Of course I knew I was no relation of the Maslins, for they had long since taken care to impress that fact on me. The diary states that a gentleman named George Armstrong, whom Mr. Maslin wrote down as being tall and fine-looking, but with a melancholy face, as though he was in trouble or had lately been subject to some misfortune, boarded at the farm with his little son, Richard, at that time aged five years, for several months. That one day he received a letter which Mr. Maslin noticed bore the Boston postmark, and that its contents disturbed him very much. He immediately started off without mentioning his destination, leaving the little boy in Mr. Maslin’s care, with a small sum of money to pay his board for about the time he expected to be away. He did not return within the time he set, and from subsequent entries on the same page it would seem that Mr. Maslin never saw him again.”

“It’s a good thing you learned that much about yourself. I suppose something must have happened to your father or he would have come back after you,” said Joe.

“You’d better hold on to it. Might possibly be of value to you one of these days.”

“It has a value for me, as it shows to some extent who I am,” replied Dick. “Luke called me a charity boy, and that taunt caused the scrap. I’ve worked like a slave for the Maslins without pay, but I’ve received any amount of abuse. Some morning Mr. Maslin will get up and find me missing.”

“What’s that you say, you young villain?” yelled the strident tones of the storekeeper, behind them.

“Don’t you let me catch you tryin’ to light out of here before I give you leave, or I’ll be the death of you. What do you mean, anyway, by hangin’ over the counter and idlin’ your time away when there’s a dozen things you might be doin’? Go into the kitchen now and peel the taters for Mrs. Maslin; d’ye hear?” And he seized the boy roughly by the arm and swung him into the middle of the store.

“I’ll try and see you later, Dick, before I go,” said Joe, holding out his hand to his chum.

“I don’t think you will, young man,” said Silas Maslin, significantly. “My help hain’t got no time to waste on visitors.”

“I guess he’s got a right to say good-bye to a friend,” retorted Joe, indignantly.

“Then he’d better say it right now afore you go,” said the storekeeper, ungraciously.

“Well, Dick,” said Joe, bottling up his wrath, for he realized that Mr. Maslin was master of the situation, “good-bye, if I don’t see you again.”

“I’ll write to you and let you know where I am and what I’m doing,” said Joe.

As it proved, however, they were shortly to be reunited in a somewhat startling way.

Dick went into the kitchen, where Mrs. Maslin handed him a tub of potatoes and a knife.

“Take the jackets off ’em, and see you lose no time ’bout it nuther,” said the lady of the house sharply.

Dick made no reply, but seated himself on a stool in a corner and began his work.

“You ’most ruined Luke’s new suit of clothes this arternoon,” snapped Mrs. Maslin. “Ef I wuz Silas I’d take it out’r your hide. It seems to me my boy can’t ask you to do the simplest thing for him eny more but you must fly at him.”

Luke had evidently told the story in his own way, and whatever he might say now wouldn’t count.

“Don’t you know it’s your place to do whatever he asks of you?” asked Mrs. Maslin, shrilly.

“I’ve never refused to do anything for him when he asked me civilly,” said Dick.

“Hoighty toighty!” exclaimed the lady, sarcastically. “Must my boy bow down before you, you young whipper-snapper? The idea! Who are you enyway? Ef it hadn’t been for Silas and me, where’d you been now, you ungrateful cub? We’ve clothed you and fed you and eddicated you, and now you turn on us.”

“I think I’ve worked pretty hard for all I’ve received,” replied Dick, doggedly.

“What ef you have? It ain’t more’n you ought to do. You’ve finished the taters, hev you? Put ’em down, then, and don’t stare at me in that way. Go out and fetch me a pail of water.”

Dick obeyed without a word and then, as the mistress made no further demand on his services for the moment, went up to his bare little room just over the kitchen.

He opened the box where he kept his things and, diving down into a corner, fished up a small buckskin bag in which he kept the pennies, dimes, quarters, and several half-dollars he had been slowly accumulating from odd jobs he had done for various persons during the last three or four years.

He never finished that sentence, for suddenly the door was thrown open with a bang and Silas Maslin rushed furiously into the room.

“You thief! Give me back the money you took from the store-till this afternoon!”

“This is not your money,” said Dick, dropping the coins into the bag and holding it behind him.

As Silas Maslin sprang at him Dick thrust the bag into his pocket and proceeded to defend himself as well as he could.

This would not have been an easy job, for Mr. Maslin was strong and wiry; but chance aided the boy.

The storekeeper’s foot caught on a rent in the rag-carpet, he pitched forward and struck his forehead against a corner of Dick’s box with such force as to cause a nasty wound that stretched him, stunned, on the floor.

At that moment Mrs. Maslin appeared in the doorway and, perceiving her husband stretched motionless on the floor with the blood streaming down his face and Dick Armstrong standing over him in an attitude of defence with his fists half clenched—for the mishap which had overtaken Silas Maslin had been so sudden that he stood quite stupefied with surprise—she conceived the idea that the boy had struck down her lord and master, perhaps killed him.

“Help! Help! Murder!” she screamed loudly, dashing open the window and making the air ring with her shill cry.

He heard Mrs. Maslin’s frenzied cries, saw her violent gesticulations as she leaned out of the window, and thinking the house was on fire, he dropped the implements he was carrying and ran forward.

In the meantime Dick had raised Silas Maslin to a sitting posture and was trying to stanch the blood with a corner of the coverlet which belonged to his bed, when Mrs. Maslin turned around and saw what he was doing.

“Don’t you dare touch him again, you young villain!” she screamed, suddenly attacking the boy with her bony fists.

“What’s the matter with you?” objected Dick, trying to ward off her blows. “Why don’t you get some water and try to bring him to? What do you mean by pounding me in that way?”

“You ruffian! You murderer! I knowed you was born to be hanged!” yelled the excited woman, thumping the boy about the head and arms till he had to retreat out of her reach to save himself, for he had no idea of striking back at her.

Then she grabbed her husband in her sinewy arms and started to drag him from the room just as Huskins appeared on the scene and stared in astonishment at what he saw.

“Don’t let that boy escape, John!” cried Mrs. Maslin. “He’s made a murderous attack on Silas, and ef he hasn’t killed him it’ll be a great wonder.”

“I don’t mean nobuddy else,” snapped his mistress, sharply. “Tie him up so he can’t get away, and then run for the constable. Lands sake! It’s a wonder we haven’t all been killed in our beds afore this! I never knowed he was such a desprit boy.”

Mrs. Maslin then bore Silas into her own chamber in the front of the house, and set about bringing him to his senses.

“Mr. Maslin came up here and accused me of taking money out of his till in the store, and when I denied it he started to seize me, when his foot caught in that hole in the carpet and he pitched forward, striking his head against the corner of my box and cutting his forehead open. The shock must have stunned him. Then Mrs. Maslin appeared, threw up the window and began yelling like a crazy person. I tried to do something for Mr. Maslin, but she attacked me furiously, calling me a ruffian and a murderer, and I don’t remember what else. I tell you, John, things are getting altogether too hot for me here. Between Luke and the rest of them I am having a dog’s life of it. I might as well get out now as at any other time.”

“I shouldn’t blame you if you did. I should, if it was me,” replied Huskins, who knew what a hard time the boy had of it and really pitied him.

“I don’t believe Mr. Maslin has lost any money,” said Dick, indignantly. “I know I didn’t take any. I’m not a thief.”

“Well, he wanted five dollars mighty bad this morning, for he tried to borrow it of me. I asked him what he wanted it for; but he wouldn’t tell me. I guess he wants to send for something he’s seen advertised in the paper.”

“If Luke took the money, he’ll deny it, all right. His father will take his word before mine, and his mother will back him up as she’s done fifty times before. I’ve got a few dollars saved up, and as Mr. Maslin has discovered that fact he won’t rest till he’s got it away from me. I need that to help me out after I leave here. So I guess I’d better go before Mr. Maslin gets his hands on it.”

“You’re right there, Dick. The old man’s fingers are like pot-hooks—they hold on to everything they fasten to. Once he gets possession of your money, you’ll never see it again.”

“You’d better go down and look out for the store, John, till Mr. Maslin turns up. I’m going to make a bundle of my things and start off.”

“Yes,” replied the boy, resolutely, “I am. Mr. Maslin has called me a thief, and that’s the limit with me.”

“Well, I wish you luck. Let me hear from you some time. I’d like to know how ye get on,” and the hired man held out his hand.

Dick closed his room-door and pushed the chest of drawers against it, as he did not want to be interrupted or taken at a disadvantage.

Then he put on his best suit, made a compact bundle of such articles as he deemed indispensable, put Mr. Maslin’s old diary into an inside pocket of his jacket, and was ready to leave the house.

He was about to remove the chest of drawers when he heard the unmistakable voice of Silas Maslin mingled with the shriller tones of Mrs. Maslin, on the landing approaching his door.

The door of his room was pushed in an inch or two, as far as the obstruction would permit.

“Open the door, you young villain!” exclaimed the voice of Silas Maslin, whose temper had by no means been improved by the injury he had received.

“Push the door in, Silas,” said his wife. “There ain’t no lock to it.”

“It ain’t the bed,” said the storekeeper, and he flung himself suddenly against the panel with a force sufficient to push the obstruction back a foot at least.

Through this opening he thrust his head and saw Dick Armstrong beating a hasty retreat by way of the window.

“He’s gettin’ out of the winder. You stay here, Maria, and I’ll try to catch him below.”

Mr. Maslin, whose head was bound up with a towel, was a pretty lively man for his sixty odd years, and the way he got down the stairway and out into the yard would have put many a younger man to shame.

But the boy was as active as a young monkey, and guessed pretty closely what his persecutor’s tactics would be.

He dropped his bundle into the yard, swung himself out and alighted nimbly on his feet, and when Mr. Maslin dashed out to cut him off Dick was passing through the gate into the road.

“Come back here, you young rascal, or I’ll skin you alive!” he shouted angrily.

But the boy had no intention of returning now that he had crossed the Rubicon at last.

He bounded around the corner of the fence and ran full tilt into another boy, knocking him head over heels.

The storekeeper’s son uttered a yell of pain and terror as he floundered about on the grass.

“Sure it’s me! I was hanging about for a chance to see you again if I could. What muss have you got in now?”

“Come along with me and I’ll tell you about it,” Dick said as he picked up his bundle.

“Now I’ve got you, you pesky little villain!” and he made a dash at the boy.

Fletcher took the hint and scampered after his chum, who was flying along the “heel” path of the canal as fast as he could go.

In the gathering dusk the storekeeper failed to recognize his son and heir as the latter lay sprawling in the path, and as a consequence he stumbled over Luke’s extended legs and pitched forward, head first, like a stone from a catapult.

The momentum he had acquired in his eagerness to lay hold of Dick now worked greatly to his disadvantage.

Striking the path, he rolled over and over, clutching vainly at the grass to stay his progress.

As the space between the fence and the canal was narrow at this point, before he realized his predicament he was carried over the embankment and fell with a splash into the water.

Huskins had been attracted to the spot by the rumpus and was in time to fish his employer out of the canal; but by that time Dick Armstrong and his friend Fletcher were safe from any immediate pursuit.

“So you aren’t going back any more, then?” said Joe Fletcher, after Dick had related to him the exciting experience through which he had passed since the two lads had parted, apparently for good, in Mr. Maslin’s store, a little more than an hour before.

“No,” replied Dick, firmly, “I’m not. I am done with Silas Maslin for good and all.”

It was now almost dark, and both of them, having had nothing to eat since noon, were hungry.

“I guess you’ve done the right thing, Dick,” said his friend. “You aren’t likely to be any worse off than you’ve been at the Corner.”

“I’d have pretty hard luck if I was. I’d never amount to much as long as I stayed with Mr. Maslin. He took care that I didn’t get much chance to get up in the world. I wish now I’d more schooling,” said the boy, regretfully.

“I’ll bet you know more than Luke Maslin, and he’s gone regularly to the district school. At his age—he’s a year older than you—he ought to be at the Slocum High School. I don’t think he cares a lot to study.”

“Many boys don’t seem to realize what they let get by them until it is too late,” said Dick. “You and I, Joe, have got to cut our own way in life without any help from anybody. I guess you can hold up your end. As for me, I don’t intend to let any grass grow under my feet from this on. If you’ve rested enough, we’ll move on to Norton’s. Perhaps your friend Cap’n Beasley will give us something to eat. I haven’t had a mouthful since dinner, and I feel as if I could clean out a pantry.”

“Same here. Captain Beasley is all right, and so is his wife. They wouldn’t see anyone, even a tramp, go hungry if they could help it,” said Joe as the boys resumed their march. “They’ve a daughter, too, named Florrie. She’s as pretty as a picture,” and Joe grinned broadly.

Dick wasn’t particularly interested in pretty girls at that moment. He was thinking whether Captain Beasley would consent to take him down to New York along with Joe on the canal-boat.

“I guess he will if I pay him something, and I’m willing to put up what’s fair,” mused the boy.

Captain Beasley’s boat was moored against the eastern bank of the canal, and a few yards away was a good-sized liquor store, lit up with kerosene lamps, and, judging from the crowd within, doing a thriving trade.

There was also an open shed close by, partially filled with bundles of shingles brought there for shipment from the mill a mile or so away.

Dick followed Joe aboard the canal-boat and was introduced to Captain Beasley and his wife and daughter.

As soon as Mrs. Beasley found out that the boys were hungry, she spread a corner of the table in the little cabin for them, laid out the remains of a joint of cold mutton, boiled a pot of coffee, and upon this, flanked by a plentiful supply of bread and butter, the two lads made a very satisfactory meal.

Dick offered to pay his way to New York City, but the good-natured skipper of the Minnehaha wouldn’t hear of it for a moment.

“You and Joe here are both of you welcome to go along with us, and it sha’n’t cost you a cent. All I ask of you is to turn your hands to an odd job or two, maybe, till we hitch on behind the tug that takes us down the river.”

Dick accepted his generous offer with thanks, as Joe had already done earlier in the day when he brought his meagre bundle aboard on the strength of the captain’s former invitation.

“Neither of you lads seems to be encumbered with much dunnage,” said the skipper, with a humorous glance at the two attenuated bundles ranged side by side on a shelf and which contained all they boasted of in the world.

“We both lit out in such a hurry that we didn’t have time to pack our trunks,” grinned Joe. “Boggs skinned me out of sixty dollars; and as for Dick, I believe there wasn’t anything coming to him, though he put in many a year of good hard work down at Cobham’s Corner for Silas Maslin, who runs the store and the village post-office.”

“I’ve heard of him,” nodded Captain Beasley, recharging his pipe, “and I’ve heard of you, too, Master Dick, afore this,” and the skipper looked at the bright, stalwart, young runaway. “Silas Maslin, I understand, is a hard man to work for, though I reckon Nathan Boggs can give him a few points in that line. Both of ’em have wives that folks say would skin a flea for its fat. From which I judge that one’s appetite isn’t pampered at either place.”

“That’s right,” corroborated Dick. “We’ve both been through the mill and ought to know. I haven’t had such a good spread as was set before us to-night right here since I can remember, and I’ve a pretty good recollection.”

“Well,” said the captain’s wife, “you sha’n’t neither of you want for enough to eat as long as you are with us.”

“What are you going to do when you reach the city?” asked the captain curiously. “Got any money at all?”

“I’ve got about sixteen dollars,” replied Dick, and he told Captain Beasley by what slow and arduous means he had amassed it.

“I haven’t a red cent,” admitted Joe, making such a comical face that Florence Beasley burst out laughing.

“It’s possible I may start a bank and take Joe in as cashier,” grinned Dick.

“Not a bad idea,” smiled the skipper, “so long as it isn’t a faro bank or something of that sort.”

“I wouldn’t mind investing my capital in a sand-bank if I thought I could sell the sand and make a profit,” put in Dick.

“A successful speculator should, first of all, have brains, and then money,” said Captain Beasley, punctuating each point in the air with the stem of his briar pipe. “I judge you have the brains——”

“It was a rather poor speculation you entered into with Nathan Boggs, wasn’t it?” and the skipper turned to Joe.

“I don’t call that a speculation; that was a dead skin,” cried Fletcher stoutly.

“Well, you made an agreement with him to forfeit your wages if you quit work before the end of your term of service; you put yourself at a great disadvantage with such a man. It was to his interest to make you quit beforehand if he could.”

“If I hadn’t quit I guess I’d been carried away in a box, so I’d have lost anyway.”

“Well, you speculated on the chance of holding out, and came in for the short end of the deal.”

“Even so; that is a risk that often confronts the speculator. That’s where brains count.”

Captain Beasley looked at the clock, laid down his pipe and intimated it was time to turn in.

He led the boys to the forward part of the boat, pointed to a small open scuttle in the deck, and told them they’d find a mattress and a couple of blankets down there. Then wishing them good night, he left them to make the best of their narrow quarters.

In the morning the boat was hauled across to the other side of the canal, the side on which the towpath ran; a tandem mule team in charge of a boy who sported the biggest and most disreputable straw hat Dick had ever seen, was hitched on, and the boat began to move slowly down the canal.

As they approached the bridge at Cobham’s Corner, Dick got out of sight of the shore.

He knew there would be trouble if any member of the Maslin family caught a glimpse of him on board the Minnehaha.

So he squatted down inside the limited bit of hold in the eyes of the canal-boat which he and Joe had used for sleeping quarters, while his chum sat on the combings of the hatch with his legs swinging down and his gaze fixed on Cobham’s Corner.

“I don’t see anybody about,” reported Joe, as the boat drew near the bridge which crossed the canal at this point and connected the two sections of the county road.

Captain Beasley came forward and called on Fletcher to help detach the tow-line so that the boat could pass under the bridge.

His eyes roamed over the canal-boat from stem to stern and finally fixed themselves on Fletcher, whom he recognized, having seen and spoken to him many times when Joe called at the store to get supplies for Nathan Boggs or to see Dick.

Suddenly he ran out on the bridge and took his position just above where the boat had to pass under.

“Better ask him when you see him,” answered the boy, squatting down with his back to young Maslin, a pretty good sign that he wanted no further communication with his questioner.

“Seen anything of Dick Armstrong?” he persisted. “He’s run away from here with some of my father’s money. Constable Smock is hunting for him. Father is going to have him put in the village lock-up.”

“Maybe you’ve got him hid away aboard the boat,” added Luke, suspiciously. “If you have, you’d better give him up, or it will be the worse for you.”

As those words passed his lips the forward end of the canal-boat passed under the bridge, and Luke ran over to the other side of the structure to meet it as it floated clear.

Dick easily overheard his young enemy’s remarks from the spot where he was screened from Luke’s line of observation.

He forgot, however, to change his position below as the boat passed under the bridge, not thinking that Luke, by crossing the planks to the opposite rail, would be able to obtain a different focus down into his hiding-place if he was wideawake enough to keep his eyes well employed.

As this is exactly what Master Maslin did do, the result was he discovered Dick’s crouching figure in the narrow hold as soon as the head of the canal-boat shot out into sight again.

“I see you down there, Dick Armstrong!” he cried, of a sudden, triumphantly.

“I’m afraid it’s all up with me,” said Dick, as he scrambled out of his hiding-place.

“Well, I’d like to see them try to take you off this boat if you don’t want to go,” said Joe, rolling up his sleeves, while a look of determination came over his freckled features.

“It won’t do to resist the constable,” warned Dick. “I won’t have you get into trouble over me.”

“They’ll send him word as to my whereabouts, and he’ll get a rig and cut me off further along down the canal, don’t you see?”

“The only thing for me to do now is to leave the boat before I’m overhauled,” Dick continued. “For if I wait until Constable Smock comes along and invites me to go ashore I’ll be deprived of my savings by Mr. Maslin, even if he doesn’t follow up his threat to put me in jail.”

“I dare say you’re right, Dick; but you can’t skip yet a while, for here comes the old man and Luke across the bridge. They’ll be down on us in a couple of minutes. You needn’t be afraid that Captain Beasley’ll make you go ashore to oblige that old rhinoceros. And if he attempts to board us, he’ll be trespassing, and a douse in the canal would be the proper thing to cool him off.”

Captain Beasley was leaning negligently against the forward end of his cabin, smoking his favorite briar-root pipe in the autumn sunshine, when Mr. Maslin came running down the tow-path and hailed him, his son following along behind.

“You’ve got a boy on board your boat I want. He’s runnin’ away from my place yonder, after stealin’ a five-dollar bill. I want you to put him on shore,” demanded Silas Maslin, keeping pace with the canal-boat.

“I’ve got two boys aboard,” said the captain, in an indifferent tone. “Which one do you refer to?”

“The one with the new suit of clothes on,” replied the storekeeper, pointing to Dick. “His name is Armstrong.”

“All right,” agreed Captain Beasley. “He came on board of his own accord, and if he’s willing to go ashore he can go now.”

“I want you to make him come on shore whether he’s willin’ or not,” said Silas Maslin, energetically.

“Why can’t you? You’re captain of that boat, and I reckon you can do ’bout as you please on board of her. If he doesn’t come back with me and hand over the money he took from me, I’m going to have him arrested and put in the lock-up.”

Captain Beasley walked forward to where the two boys were standing, Mr. Maslin hastening his steps to keep abreast of him.

“That’s the man you’ve been living with, ain’t it, Armstrong?” asked Captain Beasley.

“You’ve heard the charge he made against you and his demand that you leave this boat and go back with him?”

“No, sir; I never took one cent of his money from the store,” replied the lad, stoutly.

“No, sir; I’d rather you’d throw me overboard,” said Dick, with flashing eyes.

“I’m afraid I can’t do anything for you,” said Captain Beasley, turning on his heel and walking away.

“Ain’t you going to make him come on shore?” demanded the storekeeper, angrily.

“The boy is a thief, and you’re helpin’ him to get away,” cried Mr. Maslin. “Don’t you know that’s ag’in the law and that I can make you sweat for it?”

“He has denied the charge, and as there is no proof against him his word is as good as yours,” replied the skipper, resuming his former station against the cabin wall.

“I’ll have you up before the justice for this,” shouted Mr. Maslin, coming to a stop and shaking his fist at the captain of the Minnehaha. “And what’s more, I’ll have that boy took up by the constable afore you get many miles further down the canal.”

After hurling his threats after the receding boat he and Luke turned about and hurried back the way they came.

“I guess the storekeeper means to send the constable after you with a warrant for your arrest, Armstrong,” said the captain when the two boys ranged up alongside of him after Mr. Maslin took his departure, “in which case you’ll have to go along with the officer. Now, if you will take my advice, young man, you’ll get ashore at Caspar’s, a mile below here, and make your way by land to Albany, where we’ll lay up a week or so, as I’ve got to load up there for New York after discharging what I’ve brought on from Buffalo and Syracuse. You can leave your bundle aboard—your friend will look out for it.”

After receiving explicit directions where to rejoin the boat at Albany, Dick bade all hands good-bye for the time being and left the boat at Caspar’s.

Dick Armstrong crossed the bridge and struck out across the country, following the country road.

He had general directions how to proceed, but expected to depend on people he might meet along the road to keep him from going astray.

The morning was young when he set out, and as he was in good spirits and accustomed to plenty of exercise, he walked along at a swinging gait.

About eleven o’clock he was overtaken by a farm wagon, the owner of which not only gave him a lift for several miles on his way, but his dinner also at a neat farmhouse a short distance back from the turnpike.

Although the farmer refused payment, Dick insisted on helping him for an hour about the barn, and when he finally left to continue his journey the farmer’s wife handed him a substantial package of eatables which included a pint bottle of milk.

It was a lonesome neighborhood, and as nobody was in sight to direct him which was the better one to take, he turned into the road leading off to the right.

He was glancing around for a large stone or a tree-stump for a seat on which to rest while he ate his supper, when he spied a light dimly shining through a window a little distance back from the road.

“I’ve walked enough for to-day,” he mused. “I’ll see if I can’t get a bed or a chance to sleep on the hay in the barn, perhaps, up yonder.”

The gate opening on the lane leading to the house was wide open and hanging by one hinge only.

As Dick approached the dwelling he was impressed by the air of neglect and desolation which hung about the place.

But for the solitary gleam of light which penetrated the gloom he would have believed the premises to be deserted.

The boy knocked several times on the weather-seamed door, but no one answered his summons.

It yielded to his touch, and he entered a large room that was quite bare and cheerless from floor to ceiling.

The dim light from a candle stuck in the neck of a bottle standing on a dusty mantel shelf showed him the motionless figure of a man crouching over an old stove, in which was a fire, at one side of the room.

Slowly the figure turned its head and presented a face almost ghostly from its whiteness.

“What’s the trouble with you?” asked Dick, for he easily made out that something ailed the man.

“Sick,” repeated the boy, looking at him attentively. “Gee! You do look bad, for a fact. What can I do for you?”

“If you would do me a favor, go out to the barn back of the building. You’ll find my team there. There’s a couple of blankets in the wagon and a number of gunny-sacks. Bring them in here so I can make a bed and lie down,” said the man, slowly and with much difficulty.

Dick put his bundle of food on the floor and hastened to do as the stranger had requested.

He found the team—a pair of stout horses hitched to a large, covered wagon—just as it had been led into the deserted and mildewed barn and left standing there.

With the aid of a match or two, a supply of which Dick from habit always carried about with him, he climbed into the wagon and found the things the man wanted.

The only other articles the boy noticed in the vehicle were a couple of empty bushel baskets, a sack half filled with oats, a horse bucket, a long whip and a small wicker hamper.

Dick carried the bags and blankets into the house and spread them out so as to form a bed.

“There,” he said, in his cheery tones, “you can lie down now. If there’s anything else I can do for you, let me know.”

“You’re very kind, my lad,” gratefully replied the man, who seemed to be about fifty years of age. “You might get a few sticks for the fire; the night is cold, and I’ll be glad if you could find me a drink of water anywhere near by—you’ll find a cup in the hamper in the wagon. And then, if you’d not feel it was too much trouble to give those animals a mess of oats which you will find in a bag in the wagon, you will do all that I would ask of you.”

“All right,” said Dick, and he cheerfully proceeded to do what the sick man asked of him.

He found a tin cup in the hamper, which also contained a neat sandwich, half of an apple pie, a piece of gingerbread and two pieces of candle wrapped in a bit of newspaper.

Dick fortunately turning his steps in the right direction, found a spring at the back of the barn, and fetched a cupful of the cold water to the stricken stranger, which he drank with evident relish.

Then he released them from their traces, led them into two of the dusty stalls, and dumping a liberal quantity of oats into the bins, left them to themselves.

“Have a drink of milk?” said Dick to the sick man as he untied his bundle preparatory to eating his supper.

The stranger thankfully accepted his offer, then turned on his side and apparently went to sleep.

Dick had brought in a horse blanket which he had found folded on the wagon seat, and after he had eaten all he wanted and put more wood in the grate, curled himself up near the stove and was presently oblivious to his surroundings.

He was up before sunrise, as he was accustomed to being routed out of bed at five o’clock at that season of the year by Mr. Maslin.

The morning was chilly, so he started a fire in the stove for the benefit of the stranger, who seemed to be sleeping easily.

Then, as the sun was beginning to peep above the horizon, he thought he would take a look around the place, which seemed to be going to rack and ruin.

His investigations did not extend very far, for just beyond the line of broken fence which marked the boundary of what had probably been the truck patch Dick found an apple orchard.

A large number of the trees were not only loaded with this fruit, but the boy’s experienced eye told him that many of the trees were of a superior variety.

Dick gathered an armful and carried them to the house. The strange man was awake, but very weak and not in condition to get up.

“You’d better drink the rest of this milk,” said Dick, offering the tin cup.

“Mine is Hiram Bond. You’ve been very kind to me. I don’t know what I should have done if you hadn’t turned up. Where do you live?”

Dick gave him a brief outline of his life, and more particularly of his recent experiences.

“You’ve had a hard time of it,” said the man, feebly, “and I don’t wonder you cut loose from that storekeeper. I live in Albany, and make a living—not a very good one—with my team, carrying loads of stuff around the country. I just moved a family from the city suburbs to Wayback, some fifteen miles from here, and was on my return when I was took bad. I’m subject to spells of heart trouble, and I’m afraid I sha’n’t last long. I don’t feel at all good this morning. Perhaps I’ll feel better by and by. If you don’t mind staying with me till the afternoon, I may feel able to sit up in the wagon, and you can drive me back to the city. It’ll save you a walk of thirty odd miles.”

Dick immediately agreed to this proposition, and then his eyes resting on the pile of rosy apples he had brought in, an idea struck him.

“There’s an orchard back of the barn that’s full of this kind of apples,” he said, showing a couple to Bond. “If you don’t mind, I could load the wagon with them, and we could sell them at a good profit in Albany. They’re only going to waste here, and as your wagon is empty, it’s a chance for both of us to make a stake.”

“Do so, my lad, if you think there’s anything in it for you. I won’t touch a cent of what you may get. I’ll give you the use of the team for what you’ve done for me already.”

The man shook his head, said he felt tired, turned over, and tried to go to sleep again.

Dick spent the entire morning gathering apples, making selection of the best that he shook down or knocked from the limbs.

“It’s like picking up money,” he mused as he gathered them into one of the bushel baskets and then carried them to the wagon, which he had drawn out into the yard, and dumped them inside.

“I wonder how many bushels I can get away with,” he figured, after a careful estimate of the load he had already secured. “I believe this wagon will hold close on to forty bushels, but it’ll be an all-day job to gather that many. I’m afraid I’ll have to be satisfied with twenty, if we’re going to leave here early this afternoon. That ought to give me fifty dollars out of the spec. Gee! That’s better than working like a slave for Silas Maslin at nothing a week and skimpy board.”

Dick looked in on Hiram Bond every little while, but the man appeared to be sleeping right along.

“I guess I might as well clean up Mr. Bond’s basket,” he argued. “It isn’t likely he’ll care for any solid food to-day. I’ll get him some milk at the first house I see along the road.”

So Dick ate the sandwich, the piece of gingerbread, and the remains of the apple pie, topping off with a big drink of spring water.

At two o’clock he found Hiram Bond awake, but as weak as a cat, to use his own expression.

“I’ll take one of the horses and start on down the road for help,” said Dick, regarding the man with an anxious eye. “You’ll die at this rate, for you haven’t had any nourishment but that small cup of milk all day.”

“Perhaps you had better do so,” acquiesced Bond, feebly. “I think there’s a farmhouse about five or six miles below here.”

“Then I’m off,” said Dick. “I’ll get them to send a vehicle to remove you from this place—you can’t stay here another night.”

Dick mounted one of the animals and started off down the road, the horse being accustomed to nothing faster than a gentle trot.

Here he told his story, which aroused the practical sympathy of the farmer, who hitched up a light wagon, collected such things, including a bag of feed for the horses, as the occasion seemed to demand, and in company with Dick started for the deserted homestead.

Wrapping him up in the blankets, he and Dick started him to the wagon and made him as comfortable as possible for the ride.

Farmer Haywood nodded and then drove off, Dick returning to the work of gathering more apples.

“I can carry another ten bushels just as well as not,” he said to himself. “I will stay here all night and finish the job in the morning. I’ll be twenty-five dollars more to the good by hanging on. I guess I can stand a diet of apples and water for a few hours, at that rate. It won’t be the first time I’ve gone to sleep or to work half fed. If a fellow expects to get along in the world he’s got to take things as they come, and say nothing.”

Next morning about eleven o’clock Dick walked his team, with his load of some forty bushels of harvest apples, into Farmer Haywood’s yard.

“How is Mr. Bond?” was his first question of Mrs. Haywood, who greeted him at the door.

“Very poorly, indeed. We had to send for a doctor. I’m afraid he isn’t going to recover.”

After he had hauled the wagon into a corner of the yard, and put the horses into the barn, the lad had something to eat and was then taken up to see Hiram Bond, who had been accommodated with a spare room and was the object of considerate attention.

“I’m glad to see you again, my lad,” said Mr. Bond, in a very weak voice, regarding Dick with an earnest expression. “I should like you to stay with me while I last; I will make it all right with you.”

“I shall be glad to stay with you till I can get you back to your home in Albany,” replied Dick, cheerfully. “I’m sure you’ll be all right in a day or two.”

“I shall never be all right again. This isn’t the first attack of heart failure I’ve had, but I feel it will be the last. I’ve lost all my strength. My insides seem to have collapsed entirely. It is a strange, indescribable sensation that warns me to prepare for my last journey. Boy, it is useless to disguise the truth—I am going to die. The doctor didn’t say so, but I read the fact in his face. He saw that he could do nothing for me. Well, it matters little whether I die now or a little later on. I have no kith or kin to whom my death would be a blow. I am entirely alone in the world. At one time it was different, and I was well off; but now my team and the few dollars in my pocket-book represent all my earthly possessions. My boy, I have been thinking of you while I have been stretched on my back. You are beginning life quite as friendless, I might say, as I am leaving it. But you appear to have energy and the capacity for hard work. I have little doubt but you will succeed. You have been kind to me and I wish I was in a position to return the favor substantially. What little I can do for you to help you along I will do. You shall have my team to use or dispose of as you may think best. The money I possess will scarcely more than recompense Farmer Haywood for his trouble and pay the expenses of my funeral. I should like to be buried in some quiet spot—the nearest village burying-ground. If you will see that this is done, it is all I ask of you.”

Dick was exceedingly shocked as he listened to the words of the dying man—for that Hiram Bond really was passing away, slowly but surely, there didn’t seem to be any doubt.

He requested the farmer to execute a bill of sale, which he signed with difficulty, transferring his wagon and team of horses to Dick.

There was little change in his condition until after midnight, when he gradually grew weaker and weaker, and finally died just before daylight.

Although Dick had met him so strangely only a couple of days before, his death affected the boy greatly for the time being.

A simple funeral from Farmer Haywood’s to the nearby churchyard wound up the life history of Hiram Bond, and the day following Dick Armstrong drove his suddenly acquired property into the streets of Albany.

He had an idea that by visiting the various hotels in the city he might dispose of his apples to good advantage and with more profit than if he did business with a commission merchant.

His plan was successful, largely because the stewards of the places he visited happened to be running out of the fruit and because his apples were uncommonly fine and quite scarce in the market.

As a consequence he obtained an average of about $2.60 a bushel for them, and when he put his team up at the place where Hiram Bond had been accustomed to keep it he was in possession of bills and silver to the amount of $120, which included the money he had brought away from his former home at Cobham’s Corner.

Late that afternoon Dick Armstrong, feeling all the importance of a small capitalist, started out to locate the canal-boat Minnehaha.

He found the rendezvous of those craft without much difficulty, but to pick out the particular boat of which he was in search was not quite such a simple matter.

At length he found her, hauled up against the wharf, discharging the last of her cargo.

Joe Fletcher was working like a good fellow, helping Captain Beasley’s regular deckhand, when he caught sight of his chum.

“Dick, old man, I’m just tickled to death to see you again,” he exclaimed, grabbing Dick’s hand and shaking it as though he would pull it off. “We expected to see you yesterday, according to my calculations. How have you fared since you went ashore at Caspar’s?”

“First class. I’ve news that’ll surprise you,” replied Dick, with sparkling eyes.

“Did he? I guess yes. He came up with us about eight miles below Caspar’s. Wouldn’t take our word that you had gone ashore, but insisted on searching the boat. Of course, Captain Beasley let him have full swing. After he had gone into every nook and corner that might have concealed you, he gave the job up and left, the maddest man I’ve seen for many a day. I was afraid he might get wind of you at Caspar’s and run you down; but it appears he didn’t. I’ll bet Silas Maslin and Luke ain’t feeling any too good over the constable’s failure to fetch you back,” and Joe snapped his rough, brown fingers and laughed gleefully.

“You don’t think that Silas Maslin would come on to Albany on the chance of picking me up, do you?” asked Dick, with a shade of apprehension in his voice.

“You ought to be better able to judge of that than me, Dick. You know what he is and what his feelings probably are on the subject. If I was you, I’d keep my eye skinned and not let him catch me, if he should come.”

In a few minutes they knocked off work for the day, and while Joe was washing up, Captain Beasley came on board and greeted Dick in his usual breezy manner.

He accepted the skipper’s invitation to supper, and when he made his appearance in the cabin was warmly welcomed by Mrs. Beasley and Florrie.

Joe and the others were curious to learn the particulars of his journey from Caspar’s, though they had no idea that he had met with any particular adventure by the way.

“Gee!” exclaimed Joe, when Dick had finished his recital. “If that doesn’t read like a story-book! So the man actually gave you the wagon and the pair of horses?”

“That’s what he did. The outfit is housed at McGee’s stables at this moment.”

“What are you going to do with them? Sell them, I s’pose, ’cause you can’t take them with you on this boat.”

“I haven’t decided what I’ll do yet,” said the boy, with a thoughtful expression.

“I brought on forty bushels and sold them to half a dozen of the hotels just as soon as I struck town.”

“That’s right,” nodded Dick, while his face lighted up with satisfaction. “That wasn’t a bad speculation, was it, Captain Beasley?”

“I should say it was a very good one,” replied the skipper of the Minnehaha.

“And I’ve got another one in my eye now that ought to pan out even better.”

“There’s a fine grove of walnuts and hickory nuts on that deserted farm, and they’ll be ready for picking just as soon as the frost sets in good and hard. They’ll fetch over two dollars a bushel in this town at wholesale. If there’s one bushel, I’ll bet there’s a hundred and fifty to be got.”

“Great Scott!” almost shouted Fletcher in his excitement. “Let me in on this, will you, Dick? I’ll help you pick them at twenty-five cents a bushel, just for the fun of the thing.”

“I was about to propose something of that kind, as I wouldn’t care to go out there all alone. You don’t know what a spooky place it is. I’ll take you in as a partner, Joe, and give you one-third of the profits. I’d make it even up, only the team costs something, and it’s only fair I should have a percentage for its use.”

“A third is too much,” objected Joe. “It’s your discovery and your scheme. I’ll be perfectly satisfied with one quarter.”

“No, Joe; it must be one third, or I’ll call the whole thing off and sell the team,” said Dick, resolutely.

Captain Beasley, who had been an amused listener to the foregoing debate, now ventured a word.

“You forget, Master Armstrong, that it’ll be some two or three weeks yet before you can gather those nuts. What are you going to do in the meantime, for of course, if you’ve determined on this plan, you’re not going down to New York on this boat.”

“Oh, I’ve got an idea to cover that time,” said the boy, with sparkling eyes.

“Yes, I dare say it is. Any risk that a person takes for the sake of expected profit is a speculation, I suppose.”

“But, first of all, I’d like to take a run out to that farm to-morrow and gather the rest of those harvest apples. There’s fully another load to be got, and if I don’t take them they’ll rot on the ground.”

“Then that’s settled. Do you mind if I bunk aboard here to-night, Captain Beasley?” asked Dick.

“You’re welcome to sleep, and eat for that matter, aboard the Minnehaha as long as she’s here, young man. I admire enterprise in a fellow of your years, and you seem to be loaded to the hatches with it. If you aren’t a millionaire one of these days, it’ll be because the trusts we read about and the plutocrats have gobbled up all the wealth that’s lying around loose.”

Soon after that, the two boys retired to the forward compartment of the hold and turned in, but they had so much to talk over and plan for the future that it was nearly midnight before they fell asleep.

Dick found lots to interest him before breakfast, in the panorama of the city’s water front, at least that section of it where the fleet of canal-boats was moored close inshore.

After breakfast the lads bade Captain Beasley and his family good-bye, promising to look them up at the Water Street moorage when they reached New York.

Dick then led the way to McGee’s stables, where he and Joe hitched up the wagon and started out.

Having provided themselves with provisions and feed for the animals, they took the road back to the deserted farm, at which they arrived, without any adventure, late in the afternoon.

They passed a second night at the old rookery, as Joe called it, and on the following morning started early for Albany.

Dick sold the entire load to a commission house for $95, but he and Joe had to procure the necessary number of barrels to hold the fruit in shape for shipment to New York.

After paying to Joe his share of the profits, Dick found, expenses deducted, that his cash capital had increased to $175.

“Gee! I never was so rich in my life!” exclaimed Joe Fletcher as he counted over the $30 he had received from Dick and contemplated the bills with a childish sort of delight.

“If Nathan Boggs had paid you what he owes you for your five months’ service on his farm, you’d have ninety dollars easy enough now,” remarked his young partner and chum, tucking away his own “boodle” in a safe place.

“Yep, I ’spect so,” grinned Joe, who was not lamenting the loss of that $60 just at present.

“And the screws ought to be put to Silas Maslin, too,” said Joe. “He treated you worse, on the whole, than Boggs had the chance to do to me.”

“I don’t say he didn’t; but I’m satisfied if I never run across him again. I can make my own way in the world, and I’m going to do it.”

“I’ll bet you will. You’re smart enough, all right,” answered Joe, admiringly.

The boys had arranged with the stable keeper so they could sleep in the building in the little room in the hayloft formerly occupied by Hiram Bond.

On their return from the restaurant where they had had supper they found a man waiting to see Dick.

“My name is Gibson,” said the stranger, introducing himself. “I’m from Wayback, where I keep a general store. I’ve got a load of stuff I want hauled out to my place. Hiram Bond used to do my carting, but as he is dead and I’m told you have his outfit, I thought probably we could strike a bargain between us. What’ll you charge me?”

“How far is Wayback from here?” asked Dick, who was ready to accept the job if there was anything in it.

“I wouldn’t do it for a cent lower, Mr. Gibson. I don’t know what Hiram Bond was accustomed to charge you, but the price I’ve set is a reasonable one. I had something else in view, but I’ll haul your goods out to Wayback on the terms I’ve mentioned. Is it a bargain or not?”

Dick’s manner was thoroughly business-like, and he appeared to be indifferent whether he got the job or not.

“But you’re only a boy,” persisted the Wayback storekeeper. “You ought to do it cheaper than a man.”

“Think so?” retorted the lad, looking him in the eye. “Well, that isn’t the way I do business. I expect to deliver your stuff in as good shape as Hiram Bond would have done, so the fact that I am a boy can’t make any difference.”

Mr. Gibson finally agreed to the charge and told Dick to be on hand at a certain wholesale store in the morning, where he would meet him.

Mr. Gibson had a free ride along with his goods, and the team reached Wayback about nine o’clock next evening.

The boys carried the merchandise into the store, and as the storekeeper had a barn large enough to accommodate the horses and wagon, Dick arranged with him to put up his team there, they to sleep in the wagon themselves.

While Dick and Joe were hitching up next morning a farmer came up in company with Gibson and inquired what it would cost him to get a load of potatoes to Albany.

The farmer, with some shrewdness, named a lower price than he actually expected to receive, thinking thereby to cheapen the cartage.

“All right,” said Dick, promptly. “I’ll buy the lot from you for so much”—naming a lower figure—“and I’ll pay you cash down for them.”

The farmer saw he had made a mistake and started to hedge, but Dick said those were the only terms on which he would take the potatoes.

“I expect to make a profit, or I shouldn’t have made you the offer,” said Dick.

“But I made a mistake in putting the price too low. I can get more’n that at a commission store in the city,” persisted the agriculturalist.

“I offer you spot cash,” and Dick yanked out his roll of bills, which he displayed before the owner of the potatoes. “Take me up, and you’re relieved of all further bother.”

The farmer needed the money, and the sight of the cash smothered his scruples about selling at a reduced price, so the deal was closed on the spot.

He found them to be in all respects as they had been represented, so he paid over the money and loaded them into the wagon.

“Yes; I expect to make at least twenty-five dollars out of them,” replied his chum.

As a matter of fact he cleared $32, for the price had gone up a little within the two days he had been away from the city.

Next day Dick picked up another cartage job as far as Newtown Junction on the railroad.

Just before reaching his destination he noticed the section men replacing a lot of old sleepers with new ones.

The old ones were tossed aside for the present, and he saw a group of small boys carrying several of them off.

On his return he singled out the section boss and asked him if he could have a few.

As Dick intended to take up the offer literally, he handed the boss a dollar-bill.

Then the two boys gradually filled up the wagon with the old ties as they proceeded on their way.

Dick stopped at a large woodyard in Albany and sold the wood at a very handsome profit, a third of which went to Joe.

“The firm of Armstrong & Fletcher seems to be doing pretty well, all things considered,” remarked Joe as he added a few additional bills to his small wad.

Two weeks slipped by, and Dick managed to keep his team employed at various odd jobs of hauling between the business section and the suburbs of Albany.

Accordingly he purchased the necessary supplies for a possible week’s stay at the deserted farm, and they made an early start for the scene of operations.

The nights were now cold and frosty, and the boys found it necessary for comfort to keep up a good fire in the old, rusty stove, the only article left behind by the former occupants when they moved away.

Just why this farm had been abandoned was not clearly understood, even by Farmer Haywood, the nearest neighbor.

It had been vacant for more than a year, and a mildewed sign planted near the fence gave the passerby notice that the place was for sale and that information could be obtained from somebody whose name and address were no longer decipherable.

Early on the morning succeeding their arrival Dick and Joe walked out to the grove of nut trees and found the ground literally covered with nuts.

They brought the wagon to the edge of the wood and spent the whole day loading up.

“This is first-class,” said Dick when they got back to the shelter of the house. “I was afraid we might have to hang around here several days before we could get busy. Now I guess we’ll be able to clean up this place in a week, including, of course, the time spent in carting the nuts to the city.”

Dick was not far out of the way in his calculation as to the time it would take them to gather the plentiful supply of nuts to be found in the grove.

“This will be our last load,” he said as they were driving back to the abandoned farm eight days later, after having delivered and sold 150 bushels of nuts in Albany for $2.10 a bushel in bulk.

“Yes; there aren’t many more left,” said Joe, regretfully, for having pocketed so far a matter of $100 as his share of the speculation, he could not help wishing such a good thing would keep up indefinitely. “What are we going to do next?” he added.

“The firm of Armstrong & Fletcher will probably dissolve, for the time being, at any rate, as I expect to sell the team and start for New York.”

“I don’t know that you need be. There’s more money to be made in New York,” said Dick, encouragingly.

“But you’ve got to know how to make it,” retorted Joe, who had lived many years in the great metropolis himself and had found money-getting a serious proposition there.

“You’ve got to know how to make it anywhere, for that matter,” said Dick. “I’ve heard several people say that if you can’t make money in New York you can’t make it anywhere.”

“The papers say there are a hundred thousand men out of work there all the time.”

“Albany is the biggest town you’ve ever seen in all your life. Wait till you strike New York, and you’ll be lost.”

“I think not, Joe, with you at my elbow to show me the ropes. I’ve cut my eye-teeth in a pretty hard school, and even if I’m only sixteen, I feel sure I can hold my own against the world. I’ve made nearly four hundred dollars since I cut loose from Mr. Maslin, four weeks ago, and I think that’s a pretty fair showing for a beginner.”

It was now quite dark, and a turn in the road brought them in sight of the house.

“Hello!” exclaimed Joe, clutching Dick suddenly by the arm. “Someone is before us this time.”

“Tramps!” ejaculated Dick, in some dismay. Then he added, in a perplexed tone: “What are we going to do? They’ve got possession of the only decent room in the house.”

“Even so; he has as much right there as we have, if it came to an argument.”

“We’ve simply been trespassers on the property ourselves from the start,” said Dick.

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” asked Fletcher as Dick pulled up under the trees by the side of the road a short distance from the gate.

“Wait here till I come back,” and the young driver handed the reins to his chum and descended from his perch.

Vaulting the rail fence, he approached the old building by a flank movement across the weed-encumbered yard.

A fire was burning in the grate, and gathered about the stove were three figures, two of whom were boys.

The man, who had at that moment a bottle glued to his lips, was bearded and wore a coarse fur cap.

As the man dropped the flask into a pocket of his jacket he made some remark and lifted the stove-lid with a stout twig.

The end boy reached for some broken branches, rose and began to stuff these into the grate.

The glare of the blaze shone full in his face, and Dick gave a gasp of astonishment.

It was a strange place and strange company for the son of Silas Maslin to be found mixed up with.

“I never knew Luke to be away from home before, and here he is thirty miles from Cobham’s Corner,” murmured Dick. “There’s something queer about it.”

The cold night wind whisking about the building soon made the young watcher’s position one of discomfort.

“They act as if they intended to stay a while,” he said to himself. “I’d like to discover what their intentions are.”

Dick thought a moment; then he went round to a door which he knew opened on an entry that communicated with the kitchen.

The door at the end of the entry leading into the kitchen was partly open, and through this door the boy plainly heard the sound of conversation.

He tiptoed his way to the door, and through the crack between the upper and lower hinges he got a good view of the intruders.

“I didn’t agree to go into any such thing as this when I left home,” said Luke, in a tone of plain remonstrance.

“It ain’t what you agreed to do; it’s what you got to do, now you’re with us,” spoke up the whiskered man, with a fierce glance at the storekeeper’s son, evidently bent on intimidating him.

“What you kickin’ about, Luke,” interjected the other youth, whom Dick thought he identified as a certain bad boy of Walkhill village named Tim Bunker. “A feller that’ll steal five dollars off his old man ain’t got no reason to grumble when he’s showed how he kin make twenty times that much without any risk to mention.”

The speaker leaned forward and squirted a stream of tobacco juice into the fire, while the bearded man nodded his approval.

“I didn’t steal five dollars,” said Luke, doggedly. “I borrowed it from the till because I needed it, and I was going to put it back when I got it again.”

“Ho, ho! That ain’t the way you give it to me first. You told me how slick you got away with it, ’cause you wanted it to buy a gun you saw advertised in a Syracuse paper, and your old man wouldn’t give you the price. Then you said the old man found out he was a fiver to the bad and charged Dick Armstrong with stealing it. He skipped out ’cause he couldn’t prove he didn’t take it and didn’t wanter go to jail for what he didn’t do. And you ain’t heard nothin’ from him since, have you?”

“After doin’ all that damage, now you want to preach us a sermon ag’inst helpin’ ourselves to a nice little bunch of dough that’s just waitin’ to be put in circulation after lyin’ in old Miser Fairclough’s strong-box these forty years. He’s a peach, ain’t he, Mudgett?” appealing to the man beside him, who at that moment was taking another drink from his flask.

“A born chump,” admitted Mudgett, wiping his lips with the cuff of his jacket. “I’m disappointed in him, Tim.”

“So’m I. Thought he had more backbone. And it’s such an easy snap, too. Just like pickin’ up money, ain’t it?” grinned the Bunker boy.

“That’s what it is,” replied Mudgett, complacently. “It was a clever idea of mine to send that old miser a letter telling him his brother, who lives in Walkhill, was dead and had left him the bulk of his money.”

“That’s right,” grinned Bunker. “Fairclough has been waitin’ for his brother to die for twenty years or more. It’s the only thing that could have got him away from his house.”

“And now all we’ve got to do is to walk in and help ourselves,” said Mudgett.

“That’s all,” winked Tim Bunker. “It’s almost a shame it’s so easy.”

“Brace up,” he cried to Mr. Maslin’s graceless son. “You’re one of us now in this scheme, and Mudgett won’t hear of you backin’ out at the last minit.”

“That doesn’t make no matter of difference whether you want to or not,” said Mudgett, in a threatening voice. “You’re in this thing right up to your neck, for you delivered that letter to Fairclough himself, and he won’t forget that when he comes back and finds out what happened while he was away. You can’t go back to Cobham’s without the certainty of being arrested on sight.”

The bearded man stated the case with such brutal frankness that Luke turned white and began to whimper.

“Shut up, will you!” thundered Mudgett, reaching over and grabbing Luke by the collar. “Stop your snivelling, or I’ll break every bone in your body.”

“When do we start, Mudgett?” asked Bunker, fishing a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it.

“We’ll start now, I guess. It must be close on to nine o’clock. There isn’t much danger of anyone seeing us on the road after that hour.”

Dick, who had been an amazed listener of the foregoing conversation, concluded it was time to withdraw.

When he got outside he found the light had been extinguished in the kitchen, and he took that as a sign that the trio were on the move.

Fearing his presence might be detected in the yard if he attempted to recross it to the fence, he crept under a corner of the porch and waited.

Mudgett and the two boys appeared almost immediately and walked out to the road.

Dick was in a sweat lest they might discover the team where it had been waiting a good half-hour for him to return.

But they turned up the road without looking in the other direction, and when Dick reached the gate he could just make out their figures disappearing in the distance.

“You’ve been a mighty long time investigating matters,” grumbled Joe Fletcher, poking his head over the seat when he heard his chum’s voice, for he had retired to the interior of the wagon to keep warm.

“Perhaps I have,” replied Dick, as he climbed up to his perch and started the team. “But I guess I’ll surprise you when I tell you what I’ve seen and heard.”

“Well, I’m ready to hear the story,” said Joe, with mingled impatience and curiosity.

“Of course you’ve heard of William Fairclough, who keeps a stock farm at Walkhill,” began Dick.

“And you’ve also heard he has a brother named Adam, who lives on the outskirts of Jayville, which is six miles from here.”

“You’ve got it right. He occupies an old mansion, built some time before the Revolutionary War. He bought the place for a song, I heard, about forty years ago. Well, there’s a scheme on foot to rob old Fairclough to-night, and it’s up to us to head it off.”

“Exactly. He has been decoyed away to Walkhill by a bogus letter, which informed him that his brother William is dead.”

“I overheard a large part of the scheme by listening just outside of the kitchen door that opens on the entry.”

“Then it was a gang of robbers you found at the house?” said Joe, in open-mouthed wonder.

“I found a man and two boys,” answered Dick. “But before I say anything more we’ll unharness the team and make them comfortable for the night.”

The two boys lost no time getting the horses into the barn and putting before them a plentiful supply of oats.

“Did you ever run across a fellow named Tim Bunker in Walkhill?” asked Dick, taking up the thread of his story again, as he dived into their provision hamper and fished up a couple of egg sandwiches, one of which he handed to his chum, with the remark that time was precious and that was all he might expect to eat for some hours.

“I’ve heard of Tim Bunker,” said Joe, with a nod, as they walked toward the road. “He’s a hard nut. What about him?”

“No, I don’t think you could. Don’t fall down, now, when I tell you. It is Luke Maslin.”

“Luke Maslin!” exclaimed Joe, stopping stock still in the middle of the road.

“Yes, Luke Maslin,” repeated Dick, enjoying his friend’s astonishment. “He’s in pretty bad company.”

“That’s what surprised me at first, but from what Tim Bunker said in the kitchen while I was taking it all in from behind the door, I’ve got a pretty clear idea of the way Luke has got himself into this pickle. It seems he did take that five dollars out of his father’s money-drawer that I was accused of stealing.”

“Then he foolishly boasted of it to Tim Bunker, thinking he had done a clever thing. Now it looks as if Tim took advantage of this knowledge to force Luke to join him and the man Mudgett in the enterprise they have in hand without letting him know exactly what they intended to do.”

“Because it looked to me as if they’d just been explaining the real situation to him before I came on the scene, for he was kicking against it like a mule.”

“Yes. Mudgett and Tim Bunker were sharp enough to put Luke in a tight box before they took him into their confidence.”

“They had him deliver the decoy note to Adam Fairclough. It was a mean trick, for it implicates Luke in the job, as they intended it should. That puts him completely in their power, don’t you see?”

“I wouldn’t be in his shoes for a mint,” said Joe as they turned into the road leading to Jayville. “But it serves him right for stealing that money from his father, and then when it come out letting you shoulder all the blame. He wouldn’t have opened his mouth to clear you if you’d been arrested for the theft and put in the village lock-up,” he added indignantly.

“Of course I’m right. Didn’t he give you away to his father the moment he spied you hid down in the hold of the canal-boat?”

“He certainly did, and I think I could have thrashed him for it if I’d had the chance. I felt like doing it.”

“He’s in a pretty bad hole now, all right. If we can prevent this burglary to-night, it is possible we can save him from some of the consequences of his foolishness.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d care to waste much consideration on a fellow who for years treated you as mean as Luke has done,” said Joe, in some surprise.

“I don’t say he deserves anything of me, but still I’m willing to do what I can to save him from going to prison,” said Dick, generously.

“Well, I don’t know what you expect to do. You’re the captain and I’m going it blind after you. But if you’ve a scheme for catching these fellows, and we do catch them, I suppose Luke could turn State’s evidence and escape the penalty.”

“Why so?” said Dick, looking at his companion in surprise. “You wouldn’t stand off and allow that old man to be robbed when you might be able to prevent it, would you?”

“I don’t mean that; but you forget that we are liable to be detained as witnesses if a capture is made, and that will give Silas Maslin a chance to get hold of you again.”

“This will make a slight change in my plans,” he said, suddenly. “I intended to get help to tackle these fellows, but I think now it will do as well if we succeed in scaring them off. I’m satisfied if we can put a spoke in their wheel, and it will do away with the difficulty you mentioned.”

The sky, which had been overcast up to this point, now began to show through here and there in patches.

And ere long the imprisoned moon sailed into these spaces, and her light occasionally illuminated the landscape.

One of these spells of moonshine showed the boys the distant spire of the Jayville Methodist Church and the roofs of many of the houses.

“The Fairclough mansion is over yonder,” said Dick, pointing in the direction. “I remember Mr. Maslin pointing it out to me a year ago, when we drove down here one day on business. We’ll cut across this meadow and save at least two miles by the road.”

Dick pointed out a couple of branches that would make stout cudgels, and he and Joe were presently in possession of a pair of serviceable weapons.

As they cautiously drew near the Revolutionary relic they made out three indistinct figures hovering about the building.

Suddenly the figures clustered about a rear window that was high above their reach, and Dick and Joe saw one of them mount on the shoulders of the other two and commence operations by splintering the glass with a blow of some implement.

At that interesting juncture the boys’ ears caught the sound of approaching wheels, and before they realized what was about to happen a miserable-looking buggy, drawn by a thin, bony mare, dashed into the unkempt driveway and rattled up to the porch.

The occupant of the ramshackle vehicle showed up in the moonlight to be an old man of at least eighty years, wrapped in a faded green overcoat, with a comforter of some indescribable color tucked about his throat, the ends floating in the night air.

His approach had been discovered by the would-be burglars, and the two who had formed the base of the pyramid that had just boosted the third through the fractured window, rushed around to the front of the house and attacked the old man from two sides.

“That must be Adam Fairclough,” explained Dick, he and Joe springing to their feet. “He must have met somebody on the road who told him that his brother wasn’t dead, and thus aroused his suspicions that something was wrong at this end of the business, and so he came right back. Those rascals may kill him if we don’t interfere, Joe. So, come on. Let’s take them by surprise.”

Thereupon both boys leaped the fence and, flourishing their cudgels, rushed to the rescue.

Mudgett had seized the old miser by the arm and was dragging him out of the buggy when Dick Armstrong sprang upon him like a young tiger and bore him to the ground. At the same instant Joe Fletcher ran around the vehicle and hit Tim Bunker such a whack over the head with his cudgel that the Walkhill youth saw unnumbered stars and hastened to make his escape over the back of the buggy.

But Joe cut him off, and the two boys were soon mixing it up pretty lively, with all the advantage in Joe’s favor.

In the meantime Dick found Mudgett a tough proposition to get away with, while the bearded man discovered in the strong and active boy a hard nut to crack.

Old Adam Fairclough, thus relieved of his assailants, stood helplessly aloof, and watched the struggle that was going on about him.

He seemed to be utterly bewildered by the condition of affairs that had faced him on his return home.

And while this lively scrimmage was going on in the front of the house, Luke Maslin in the rear took advantage of the opportunity to scramble out of the window through which he had been forced to effect an entrance, and, reaching the ground, he took to his heels and made off into the line of woods beyond the fence as fast as his heels would carry him.

“Let me up, you young imp!” exclaimed Mudgett, panting for breath after several ineffectual efforts on his part to dislodge Dick from an advantageous position on his chest.

“Do you give in?” asked the almost equally breathless boy, refusing to budge an inch from his perch.

“No, hang you for a meddlesome little monkey! But if you don’t let me up, I’ll break your head!”

“You know my name, eh? Who the dickens are you, anyway?” said the rascal in a tone that showed his surprise.

“Never mind who I am,” returned the lad. “I’ve got you dead to rights now, so you might just as well throw up your hands at once.”

But he might just as well have saved his strength, for Joe having mastered Tim Bunker and bound his arms behind his back with the whip-lash belonging to the buggy, now came to his chum’s assistance, and Mudgett, with a villainous scowl, gave up the fight and suffered himself to be secured with one of the traces which Joe took off the horse.

“I’m afraid these men meant to kill me, thinking I had money,” said old Adam Fairclough to Dick, in trembling tones, when the lad stepped up to assure him that he no longer was in danger of molestation. “But I’m a poor old man. Poor—very poor.”

“They were in the act of breaking into your house to rob you when we turned up, intending to prevent them carrying out their plan, which I fortunately overheard.”

“Why should they want to rob me when I’m only a poor old man?” cried the miser, in a pathetic voice.

“Not a cent—not a single cent!” wailed the old man, beating the air with his arms in a sort of abject denial.

That he had a strong-box filled with family plate that had not been used for fifty years, and a second one stuffed with gold and banknotes he had taken out of circulation in order to hoard up for the mere pleasure of accumulation.

Probably the old man’s wealth was greatly exaggerated, but there seemed little doubt that he was tolerably rich.

“They sent you a letter saying your brother William in Walkhill was dead; isn’t that so?” asked the boy.

“That was a trick to get you away from here so they might search the house during your absence.”

Then Dick told him the whole story of what he had learned at the old deserted farmhouse.

“You are a good boy—a brave boy,” said the poor old miser, shaking the lad by the hand in a pitiful way, for he appeared to have but little strength after the shock he had sustained. “If I wasn’t so very, very poor, I’d reward you.”

“Don’t worry about that,” replied Dick, with a cheerfulness that put the old man more at his ease. “If you’ll let us stay here for the rest of the night, it’s all we want.”

“You shall stay—yes, yes, you shall stay; but there isn’t anything I could give you to eat. I’m so poor I can’t buy much.”

From the appearance of both his horse as well as himself it was evident the miser didn’t squander much of his money on food of any kind.

Indeed, when Dick led the animal off to its stable he almost fancied he could hear its bones rattle with each step it took.

“Poor old beast!” he murmured sympathetically. “How I’d like to give you one good, square meal! But I fear the shock of it would lay you out.”

And the mare, as if it understood him, looked at him with her saucer-like eyes in hopeless resignation.

Every room appeared to be completely furnished, but the old-fashioned mahogany pieces, that must have been valuable in their day long ago, were now given over to the ravages of dust and neglect.

Adam Fairclough ate and slept in one little room at the top of the building, of which the boys caught only a momentary glimpse as the old man led them past to another room in which were a bed, some chairs, and other articles in a fair state of preservation.

There the miser left them after assuring Dick once more that he was miserably poor and sorry he couldn’t do better by them.

“Gee!” grinned Joe when they were alone, “what a liar the old fellow is!”

“Never mind, old man,” replied his chum. “It’s none of our business. We’ve done our duty, and I can sleep like a top on the strength of it. There’s one thing I’m glad about—Luke Maslin has skipped.”

Next morning old Fairclough produced some weak boiled coffee and a plate of hard bread and cheese, which he offered to them for breakfast with every evidence of earnest hospitality, repeating his refrain of abject poverty.

He wrote down the boys’ names in a big, leather-bound book, making a large cross opposite Dick’s name.

When they went out to the stable to look after Mudgett and Tim Bunker they were surprised to find that the rascals had managed to liberate themselves somehow and had taken French leave.

The boys didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry, but, on the whole, they were pleased to find they would not have to appear against the housebreakers.

Then they bade the old man good-bye, advising him to be very careful against any future attempts of a like nature.

They reached the deserted farm about nine o’clock, looked after the horses, made their stomachs happy with a substantial meal, and then hied themselves to the nutting-ground, where they spent most of the day gathering up the remainder of the crop.

Not knowing but they might possibly be surprised by the fugitives, Mudgett and Tim Bunker, if they passed the night in the house, they left the place before dark and put up at Farmer Haywood’s for supper and a bed.

Next day they arrived back in Albany and disposed of their final load of nuts, the whole speculation netting them the sum of $375.

“I think we can afford to take the train for New York,” he said after figuring up his cash capital, which he found amounted to $850.

And Joe readily agreed with him, for he had $155 tucked snugly away in an inside pocket.

The Buffalo Express, on board of which Dick Armstrong and his friend, Joe Fletcher, were traveling to New York, had just stopped at Poughkeepsie, and the exclamation was drawn from Joe by the appearance in the car of a lovely young girl of apparently fifteen years of age, accompanied by a fine-looking gentleman of perhaps forty, who seemed to be her father.

“She is pretty, for a fact,” admitted Dick, casting a look of admiration at the young lady.

She had light hair, blue eyes, and dimpled cheeks, and her smile was an entrancing one as she turned to say something to the gentleman when he seated himself by her side.

The train soon started on again and was presently speeding down the bank of the Hudson River at a fifty-mile clip.

It was a dull afternoon early in November, and the landscape looked brown and unpicturesque.

The great river flowed sluggishly along, and as they passed a string of canal-boats preceded by a snorting tug, the boys thought of Captain Beasley and the Minnehaha.

During the next hour a large portion of Dick’s attention was centred on the pretty girl who had boarded the train at Poughkeepsie.

“It’s not far above Manhattan Island, and we’ll pass there soon. Guess I’ll have another drink.”

Joe went to the end of the car where the tank was, but whether his numerous drinks since leaving Albany had used up all the water, or because there was something the matter with the cock, certain it is Joe had to go into the next car to get what he wanted.

He had probably been gone a couple of minutes and Dick was watching the pretty stranger for perhaps the hundredth time, when something startling occurred which changed the whole aspect of affairs in the twinkling of an eye.

A tremendous shock stopped the train’s momentum and piled the cars on top of each other, hurling a couple down the embankment into the river, almost every car becoming a shapeless wreck, and human beings, full of life and hope a moment before, were suddenly ushered into eternity or maimed and mangled for life.

A terrible scene was presented to Dick’s gaze when he recovered his scattered senses.

He was stunned by the shock and made giddy by the wild vaulting of the car as it leaped the rails, swung around and buried its rear end in the Hudson.

Finding he was not hurt, he struggled out from beneath the wreckage which had overwhelmed him.

His first thought was for Joe, but the boy was not in sight, which, under the circumstances, was hardly to be wondered at.

Then the groans and screams of the mangled passengers pinned under the wreck confused him and distracted his attention from his chum.

Perhaps it is not strange that the fair young girl who had occupied the opposite seat in the car came to his mind, for his eyes and thoughts had been upon her at the moment of the catastrophe.

He did not see her among the men and women who were disengaging themselves from the shapeless debris.

“Is she dead?” he almost groaned, as he thought of that golden head and lithe figure smashed beyond recognition.

Then he wondered if her father had escaped, for, like Joe, he had a short time before the accident gone forward into the smoking-car, and the boy saw as through a mist the locomotive, express-baggage, and smoking cars back slowly down on the wreck, a crowd of wild and excited passengers tumbling off the rear platform of the latter.

It was impossible for anyone to say just what had caused the trouble, but it might have been a broken axle or a suddenly loosened rail that had snapped the connection between the cars.

A portion of the top of the car Dick had just wriggled from under lay near him, and seeing a woman’s foot exposed beneath, he exerted his strength and raised one end a bit.

With desperate eagerness he put his shoulder to the heavy fragment that was crushing out the girl’s life, and shifted it aside.

She looked the picture of death, for her eyes were closed and her pallid cheek was stained with blood.

Dick, hardly knowing what to do, bore her down to the river edge and splashed the water into her face, eagerly watching for some sign of returning animation.

He was about to abandon his efforts in despair, when an almost imperceptible sigh gladdened his heart and caused him to renew his exertions.

With his handkerchief he washed away the bloodstains, and found that she was only slightly cut just above the ear.

In a few moments she recovered consciousness and cast a bewildered glance around her.

She tried to raise herself, but with a little cry of pain she sank back in Dick’s arms and lay there staring up into his face and scarcely comprehending what he was doing for her.

Suddenly the fearful nature of the catastrophe dawned upon her mind, and clutching at the lad’s arm with one little hand, her other arm lying limp and helpless at her side, she raised up again.

“I saw him leave you and go into the next car before the crash came,” said Dick.

“He went to the smoking-car,” she moaned. “Perhaps—oh, perhaps he was——”

“If he reached the smoking-car, he is safe,” said Dick, encouragingly. “That car was not damaged. I can see it from here,” and the boy nodded his head in the direction where it stood on the track. “And I see your father now!” he exclaimed suddenly. “He is running this way. What is your name?”

Looking wildly about he saw Dick signaling to him, and he easily guessed that the recumbent figure in the boy’s arms was his daughter, and he rushed down to the spot.

“Don’t say she is dead!” he exclaimed frantically, the tears streaming down his cheeks. “Jennie, darling, speak to your father!” and he knelt down and seized her nerveless hand.

“Are you much hurt, my darling?” asked Mr. Nesbitt, anxiously, taking her in his arms and kissing her tenderly.

“I don’t know, father,” she answered faintly, putting her uninjured arm around his neck. “My left arm is very numb.”

“I should be obliged to you if you would assist me in carrying my daughter up this bank,” said the gentleman to Dick.

Between them they carried her across the tracks and laid her on the faded grass under the trees, where a score or more of the injured had already been placed to await the attention of the physicians that had been telegraphed for.

“Can I be of any further use?” asked Dick, wistfully, after he had explained how he discovered the young lady under the section of the car-roof and removed her to the waterside in the hope of bringing her to. “I should like to hunt up my chum, who was traveling with me.”

“I will not detain you,” said Mr. Nesbitt, grasping him by the hand. “You have been very good to my daughter. She probably owes her life to you. I can never sufficiently thank you for the service you have this day rendered to me,” he said with grateful earnestness.

“I am glad I was able to do something for your daughter,” replied Dick, simply.

“Be sure we shall not forget you. I think you said your name was Richard Armstrong?”

“You will not forget that, Jennie. Here is my business card, Mr. Armstrong. You must call at my office, for we want to know you better.”

“Thank you; I will do so at the first chance,” replied the boy, noticing that the address was a New York City one.

“We shall be glad if you come back as soon as you find some trace of your friend, who, I think, probably has escaped, since, like myself, you say he went forward before the accident occurred.”

The wounded and the dead were now being rapidly taken from the pile of ruins by those who were uninjured.

Dick, gazing upon the work of the rescuers, saw Joe helping like a good fellow to clear away a part of the splintered car in which he and his chum had been riding.

“Gee wilikens!” cried Joe, throwing his arms about him in a spasm of pleasure. “I was almost certain you were a goner. How did you manage to get out of this ruin without a scratch? Why, it’s a perfect miracle! Half the car is smashed into toothpicks.”

For an hour Dick and Joe worked hard to help the unfortunates who had suffered from the wreck.

By that time the force of doctors sent from New York had arrived and were helping the half-dozen local practitioners who had previously been brought to the scene of the disaster.

There being nothing for Dick and his chum to do, the former thought he would like to know how the young lady he had assisted was getting on.

He found Mr. Nesbitt and his daughter in the same spot, and presented Joe to them.

A surgeon had set Miss Jennie’s broken arm, which was beginning to pain her a good deal.

One of the train hands now came up and said they had better board one of the cars of the relief train which was about to start for the metropolis.

Miss Nesbitt said she thought she could walk as far as the car if Dick and her father supported her.

She was made as comfortable on one of the seats as circumstances permitted, and in a few minutes the train started with its melancholy load of maimed, dead, and dying.

At the Grand Central Station a carriage was obtained by Dick to take the injured young miss and her father home.

The girl bade the lad a grateful good-bye and exacted a promise that he would call and see her at her home very soon.

“And don’t forget I shall expect to see you at my office in a day or two,” said Mr. Nesbitt as the vehicle drove off.

“Gee!” said Joe as they watched the carriage disappear around the corner. “You may have done a big thing for yourself for all you know, Dick, old boy. You’ve made yourself solid in that quarter, all right. And a good friend goes a long way in this city sometimes. Come along, now. I’ll pilot you down to my old boarding-place.”

Although Dick Armstrong had lived in the country all his life, and Albany was the biggest town he had heretofore seen, still the great city of New York did not overwhelm him by its immensity.

Of course he found lots to interest and astonish him, but that was only what he had expected.

He and Joe spent three days taking in the sights of the city, which of course were quite familiar to the latter, and then Dick decided to call on Mr. Nesbitt.

That gentleman was a well-known lawyer, and his office was in a big skyscraper on lower Broadway.

It rather took Dick’s breath away when he was whisked up to the sixteenth story in an express elevator, yet nobody would have judged from his manner but that he was accustomed to the trip.

“Second corridor to your left,” said the elevator man to Dick, and the boy, following this direction, had no trouble in finding the offices of “George Nesbitt, Attorney and Counsellor-at-Law,” who occupied a suite of handsomely furnished rooms, from the windows of which a splendid view of the bay and the two rivers was to be had.

“My daughter is doing very nicely, everything considered,” he said. “You must not delay calling on us; she will be very glad to see you again.”

The lad gave him a brief outline of his past life at Cobham’s Corner and what he had done since he broke away from Silas Maslin.

The lawyer was impressed with the boy’s earnestness and business sagacity and determined to help him on the road to success.

“How would you like employment in my office?” he said. “I do not mean as a clerk. I think I can use you in a way that will develop your natural business talents. I have control of several extensive estates. A young man of your ability can be made useful to me in many ways, and the experience will be of great value to yourself. You are young. The world is before you. The obligations under which you have placed me by your attention to my only child under the most trying of circumstances make me desirous of interesting myself in your future career. Will you give me the opportunity of doing so?”

Dick was both surprised and pleased at the proposition, and he accepted it at once.

Mr. Nesbitt seemed gratified by the lad’s acquiescence, and he explained to Dick what his immediate duties would be.

“I should be glad if you will start in to-morrow,” he said, finally, and the boy was told to be at the office at half-past nine on the following morning.

That evening he and Joe went down on Water Street and had supper with Captain Beasley and his family on board the Minnehaha.

“So far as obtaining employment is concerned,” remarked the skipper as he took down, filled and lit his briar-root pipe, “you two lads seem to have started on even terms, both of you having got a job to-day; it now remains to be seen which will pull out ahead.”

“Oh, there isn’t any doubt about that,” replied Joe, heartily. “I take my hat off to my friend Dick first, last, and always.”

“Not on your life. I’ll leave it to Captain Beasley. Five weeks ago you left the Corner with a measly sixteen dollars in your pocket; to-night you could count out eight hundred and fifty made by your business smartness, and I have one hundred and fifty acquired through my connection with you. We are not in the same class, old chappie. I haven’t got your head. If I had, I’d back myself to win a million in a year or two.”

Dick spent his first day in Mr. Nesbitt’s office learning many of the details connected with real estate management, and that evening he visited the lawyer’s family, on West Seventy-second Street, where he received a warm welcome from Jennie and Mrs. Nesbitt, who was an invalid.

After that he became a regular visitor, and Miss Jennie introduced him into her own particular set in which his winning manners and good looks soon established him a first favorite.

One of the estates Mr. Nesbitt had charge of was situated about thirty miles out on Long Island, and Dick went there once a week to attend to business matters in connection with its management.

He was returning one afternoon on a Long Island Railroad train when a young man boarded the car at a way station and took the only vacant seat, which was alongside Dick.

He looked to be a bright fellow, with a frank, ingenuous countenance that naturally inspired confidence; but he looked pale and weak as though recovering from a long illness.

Dick got into conversation with him, and soon found out he was an Englishman, who had come to America more than a year before after having been thrown on his own resources by the death of his only relative.

He had not been successful in securing steady employment, and subsequent illness had brought him down to bed-rock.

“If I only had a few dollars,” he said sadly as he gazed through the car window at the bleak, wintry prospect, “I feel sure I could get on my feet.”

“Yes, it is. It is strange how hard luck follows a fellow. I’ll show you something I invented just before I was taken down with the gastric fever. It’s a good idea, and since I got out of the hospital I’ve been trying to sell a half-interest for a hundred dollars so I can get it patented. But nobody seems to see any money in it.”

The young stranger put his hand in his pocket and drew out a well-worn pocket-book.

“This is entirely different from anything on the market,” he said, “and if manufactured and properly pushed, I don’t see why it shouldn’t sell well. You see, the water is kept entirely separate from the ice, which is chopped up, mixed with rock salt on the same principle as that used and packed around an ice-cream can. The ice preparation is put in here, the space indicated by I, the water in here, which is simply a galvanized receptacle which can be removed when the cooler is to be cleaned out and recharged. The advantages of this scheme are that you can use filtered water or any special kind of spring water—in fact any kind of fluid—and keep it cold without direct contact with or contamination from the ice itself.”

“The idea isn’t bad,” said Dick thoughtfully, as he studied the diagram carefully. “You want one hundred dollars for a half-interest?”

“I would dispose of a half-interest for that amount in order to get the money necessary to patent it.”

“Suppose you let me have this drawing for a few days. Here is my employer’s business address. That is my name printed in the corner. If I find there is likely to be any money in this thing, I’ll give you fifty dollars for a half-interest and stand the expense of patenting it myself. What do you say?”

“I agree to that,” said the Englishman, eagerly. “When shall I call on you?”

“I’ll let you have five dollars on account now, as you probably need the money,” he said, offering his new acquaintance a bill of that denomination. “If I don’t take up the scheme I won’t require you to return me the fiver.”

“That’s generous of you,” said the other, earnestly. “Meeting you is the first stroke of luck I’ve had for months.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” replied Dick, cautiously. “There may be nothing in it, after all.”

Then they talked of other matters till the train arrived at the Flatbush Avenue Station, where they parted, Dick taking an electric car over the bridge for New York.

That night he showed the drawing to Joe, who roomed with him, and together they discussed the feasibility of the scheme proving a paying one.

Dick had a shrewd idea that a manufacturer of water-coolers was the best persons to consult on the project, and next day called on one who happened to be a personal friend of Mr. Nesbitt.

He called his manager in, and they figured out the cost of the article on the lines presented by Dick.

“You can have my half-interest, for twenty-five hundred dollars,” was Dick’s reply, “and I dare say I can arrange to get you the other half at the same figure.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the manufacturer, after considering the matter. “I’ll build these coolers and place them on the market, allowing you a royalty of from twenty-five to fifty cents, according to size, on every one actually sold.”

“Will you give me a memorandum, in writing, to that effect and allow me a few days to consider your offer?”

“Certainly.” And the gentleman did so and handed the paper to Dick. “You will accept that as a thirty-day option on the patent.”

Dick went at once to Munn & Co. and made application for a patent covering the specifications set forth by the young Englishman, entering the same in both their names.

When the inventor called on Saturday he handed him $45, taking in return a bill of sale for half the patent rights on the cooler.

Then he told the Englishman of the offer he had had from the manufacturer, and advised that they take up with it.

“It is better than I expected to do with it,” replied the inventor, “but I don’t feel as though I could wait for the realization of such good luck. I want to get back to England. I am homesick here. Do you think the whole thing is worth five hundred dollars to you? Will you take that much risk on its success after it has been put on the market? If you will, give me four hundred and fifty more, and I will make out a new bill of sale giving you the sole right to the invention.”

“Wait a moment,” said Dick, and he went inside and had a consultation with Mr. Nesbitt.

On the following Monday he went to the manufacturer and made a contract with him on the terms proposed.

Although the boy did not then dream of the ultimate results of this deal, we may say now that the coolers were ready and put on the market in time for the summer trade.

They were a novelty, took splendidly, and in the end Dick disposed of the patent rights to the manufacturer for $5,000 cash.

One day toward the end of March, Dick was taking lunch in a Fulton Street chop-house when two well-dressed men entered the place and sat down at the opposite side of the table.

They were talking about some real estate deal they had in contemplation, and did not appear to regard the boy’s presence as a bar to their conversation.

“We can get a thirty-day option on the property for one thousand dollars, pending examination of title,” said the shorter man of the two, after the waiter had taken their order. “The old man’s bed-rock price for the entire thirty acres is twelve thousand cash. He wanted fifteen thousand at first. Allowing for streets, we can get out of it twelve city lots per acre, or three hundred and sixty lots altogether. The corner lots will fetch one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty dollars each, and the inside ones, say one hundred, according to location. That means we should realize about forty thousand dollars in the gross. You have figured out the expense of cutting through the streets, the cost of having the title guaranteed, probable cost of printing and newspaper advertising, commissions to agents, and so forth. The location of the property is good; the Long Island main line has a station close by, and the main street of Sodom can be extended through the property. Old man Durwood is clearly anxious to sell, or he wouldn’t let it go at that figure. It is easily worth sixteen thousand dollars to us as it stands, and I would give that for it sooner than let it slip through my hands.”

“It’s a good speculation,” said the tall man, nodding his head. “Thompson and Davis are in this with us, I believe.”

“Thompson is ready to put up a certified check for his share at any moment. I will see and settle with Davis this afternoon. To-morrow morning I will go out to Sodom and get the option and the deed from Durwood.”

The talk then branched off on the plans of the speculators for improving the property and putting it in shape for sale at lot prices.

Although Dick apparently paid no attention to what the real estate men were saying, nevertheless he was an interested listener to their conversation.

It happened that the Long Island estate to which the lad made weekly visits was in the neighborhood of the village of Sodom.

He had a speaking acquaintance with Jonas Durwood, the owner of the thirty acres referred to above, and knew something about the property in question.

Durwood had been offering it at $15,000, one-third cash, balance on a five-year mortgage.

The four real estate men evidently intended purchasing the property at the reduced figure for spot cash, with the view of cutting it up into lots and then disposing of them at a good profit on the whole investment.

“So,” thought Dick, “they would sooner give sixteen thousand than let it slip through their fingers. A thirty-day option on it can be had for a thousand. Well, I’ve got a thousand lying idle. What’s the matter with my stealing a march on this syndicate of four, getting the option myself, and then make them come to terms with me. If they should refuse to deal with me, it might put me in a hole; but I guess Mr. Nesbitt would see me through, for that piece of ground is well worth fifteen thousand at any rate.”

Dick thought he saw a fine chance to make $3,000 or $4,000 inside of a month if he took the thing on the fly.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he muttered as he drew near the office. “By the great horn spoon, I’ll do it! My bank-book is upstairs. I’ll draw the money and take it down with me to Sodom this afternoon, for fortunately this is the day I am due there. When that chap goes down to-morrow he’ll find that someone else has got ahead of him. Gee! Won’t he be hopping mad? Well, I guess!”

It was Dick’s rule not to let the grass grow under his feet when he embarked in an enterprise.

Therefore he hustled to get his money, and left on an early afternoon train for Sodom.

He hunted up Jonas Durwood right away and made him a twelve-thousand-dollar cash offer for the thirty acres.

“What? what? You want to buy that ground, eh? Who for? Mr. Nesbitt?” said Durwood in some surprise.

“I want a thirty-day option and I want you to put it in my name. Here’s a thousand dollars to bind the bargain. See?”

Jonas Durwood saw the bills, and the sight of them melted all further opposition he may have thought of advancing with a view of a better figure.

Dick got the option and the deed to the property, and Durwood got ten one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Now,” said the boy, after the settlement had been effected, “there was a man down here negotiating with you for this land. Have you his name and address?”

“Now, Mr. Durwood, if this man shows up here to-morrow, or any time soon, and he asks you who bought the property, just give him my card, will you?”

Dick then left him and went over to the estate to attend to such business as awaited him there.

Next afternoon a very much excited individual called at Mr. Nesbitt’s offices and inquired for Richard Armstrong.

“Did you purchase an option on Mr. Durwood’s property at Sodom yesterday?” he inquired, in a nervous tone.

“What?” exclaimed the visitor, in amazement. “You secured an option on those thirty acres for yourself?”

“Do you expect me to believe such a ridiculous story as that?” demanded the stout man, sarcastically. “Come, now, tell me who you represent?”

“I have told you. I represent myself. I bought those thirty acres because I found out I could get them at a low price. They’re worth sixteen thousand dollars if they’re worth a cent.”

“I mean it is sheer nonsense for you to say that property is worth sixteen thousand dollars.”

“We won’t argue the matter. I hold a thirty-day option on the property. Is that all you wished to see me about?”

Dick was thoroughly cool and business-like, and the stout man seemed puzzled as to what he would say next.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, presently. “I was looking at that piece of ground myself and had some idea of buying it. If you’d like to turn your option over to me, I’ll give you five hundred dollars bonus.”

“Five thousand furies!” yelled the man, looking at the boy as though he would liked to have eaten him.

“A syndicate has been formed to buy that property for speculative purposes.”

“That’s right. I don’t mind telling you how I came to buy the land. My business takes me down to Sodom once a week. I knew the Durwood property was in the market, and I have a very clear idea of its value. As soon as I got the tip that speculators were after it, I made up my mind to scoop the ground myself if I could get it low enough. I made Mr. Durwood a cash offer, and we came to an agreement. Mr. Nesbitt will examine the title in a few days, and if everything is all right he will close the deal as trustee for me. That’s all there is to it.”

“How did you learn about this syndicate and who are the men that compose it?” asked the stout man, with ill-disguised eagerness.

“You will have to excuse me answering those questions, Mr. Blake,” replied Dick, looking at the man’s card, which he held in his hand.

“Then you won’t accept an offer of twenty-five hundred for your option?” said the visitor.

“No, sir. Any time within the thirty-day limit after Mr. Nesbitt has passed on the title, you or the syndicate or any other person can purchase that option for an advance of four thousand dollars over what I paid down.”

A few days later Dick received an offer in writing from Mr. Blake, accepting his figure, contingent on Mr. Nesbitt’s assurance that Jonas Durwood could furnish a clear title and that the same would be guaranteed by the Lawyer’s Title Guarantee and Trust Company.

Dick closed with him on those terms, and a week before the option expired the delighted boy received a certified check for $5,000, and the Blake crowd closed the deal and came into possession of the property.

It was not only a red-letter day in Dick’s life, but his seventeenth birthday.

Dick also celebrated his seventeenth birthday by taking Jennie Nesbitt to the Empire Theatre to see a famous actress in a favorite play.

“She’s just splendid, don’t you think so?” said Jennie as they came out of the playhouse after the show.

“Fine,” coincided Dick, enthusiastically. “Do you know, Miss Jennie, this is the third time in my entire life that I have attended a theatre?”

“That’s right. The first week after I came to New York, Joe took me to the New Amsterdam Theatre. That was actually the very first time I ever was in a theatre. On the afternoon of Washington’s Birthday I went over with Joe to Proctor’s Fifth Avenue house. I’ve lived in the backwood, as they call it, the greater part of my seventeen years.”

“I’m sure no one would think so by your appearance or your manners,” said his charming companion. “You are not at all countrified.”

“Thank you for the compliment. I have tried to adapt myself to my surroundings. Joe helped to break me in, and I am sure I am indebted to you for the polish.”

“It is very nice of you to say that,” she answered, with a blush. “I am very glad indeed if I have helped you in any way.”

“You have generously introduced me into your own sphere of society, and that is a privilege I might otherwise have wished for in vain. It gave me a chance to associate with well-bred and educated young persons of my own age, who as a rule have treated me very nicely. It was a great advantage to me to be under your wing, as it were, and I have improved it as much as possible. I was a pretty awkward fellow when you first knew me.”

“Really, I don’t think you ever were what I should call awkward,” she said, with a smile, “though of course you were not au fait—that’s French for instructed or expert—in city ways. But dear me! there isn’t the slightest sign of hayseed about you now,” and she laughed merrily.

“The credit then is all yours, Miss Jennie,” said Dick, gallantly. “I’m afraid I’ll never be able to repay——”

“Dick Armstrong!” cried the girl, suddenly putting her gloved hand across his mouth in an imperative sort of way. “You forget what I owe you—what papa and mamma owe you!”

“But think what your father has done—is doing for me right along, Miss Jennie. It was the assurance that he was at my back that enabled me to carry this real estate deal through and put five thousand dollars in my pocket.”

“But papa did not originate nor engineer the transaction,” persisted the girl. “Nor did he actually do more for you than any lawyer would have done, except that he did not charge you anything for investigating the title.”

“Had the deal failed to go through, I should have lost my thousand dollars unless he came to my rescue, which I felt sure he would have done.”

“Now, Dick—I’m going to call you Dick after this,” she said, with a blush, “that is, between ourselves, you know, and I wish you would call me simply Jennie—you mustn’t try to make me think you aren’t smart. I know you are. Papa says so, and whatever papa says I’m accustomed to believe. He says you are bound to succeed. Now, I think you have already succeeded pretty well. You’ve never denied what your friend Mr. Fletcher——”

“Of course I mean him. What he said about you making eight hundred and fifty dollars in a month out of nothing just after you left that horrid Mr. Maslin. Then there’s that water-cooler patent which hasn’t cost you more than six hundred. Papa says the manufacturer who has taken it in hand told him it would net you several thousands of dollars in the long run. Then it wasn’t a month after you had arranged that matter before you bought the patent rights to a typewriter improvement and sold it in a week to a manufacturer at a profit of nearly a thousand dollars. Oh, dear, no; you’re not smart at all—of course not!”

What answer Dick might have made to the young lady’s enthusiastic commendation of his business abilities was fated to remain unspoken, for at that moment a thrilling episode occurred that attracted their startled attention and in the end led up to a most remarkable climax.

They were walking through Forty-first Street from Broadway to Sixth Avenue to take the elevated train at the Forty-second Street station and had nearly reached the corner when a tall, fine-appearing gentleman turned into the street from Sixth Avenue and approached them.

Almost at the identical moment three figures rushed out of the doorway of the corner building, where they had evidently hidden, and sprang upon the gentleman.

The attack was so sudden and unexpected that the intended victim was thrown to the sidewalk and would have been overpowered but for Dick, who, notwithstanding the fact that he had a young lady to protect, could not stand tamely by and witness such an outrage.

Confident of his own strength and agility, Dick left Miss Nesbitt’s side and started for the struggling group.

He felled the foremost assailant with a stunning blow under the ear—and the boy could hit out mighty hard.

Then he sprang at the second, who he saw was a husky-looking boy with his cap pulled well down about his eyes.

He had just raised a sand-bag to stun the gentleman, but was forced to relinquish his cowardly purpose and turn and endeavor to defend himself.

He had taken the attacking party just as much by surprise as they had taken their victim.

The fellow went down beside his dazed comrade, and from that moment he ceased to take any further interest in the proceedings.

This left only one more to be accounted for—another boy whose face was streaked with black as a kind of disguise—and the gentleman himself soon put him out of business.

“I want to thank you, my brave lad, for coming to my assistance,” said the stranger, shaking Dick warmly by the hand. “But for you I most certainly would have been knocked out and robbed.”

“I am glad I was on hand to help you out,” replied the stalwart boy, wiping specks of blood from his skinned knuckles.

“It was fortunate for me you were. You must come with me to my hotel. I can’t let you off in this shabby manner.”

“I am afraid you will have to excuse me,” answered the boy, with a smile, “for I have a young lady yonder waiting for me to take her home.”

“Come, Miss Jennie; the danger is all over,” called Dick. And taking courage at this, Miss Nesbitt advanced from the shadow of the buildings a few yards away.

She regarded the three prostrate forms with a little shudder and took refuge close to her young escort.

“This is Miss Nesbitt,” began Dick. “I beg your pardon, I don’t know your name, sir.”

“Is it possible?” exclaimed the stranger, regarding the boy with a new and, we may add, intense interest.

The gentleman took it mechanically without removing his gaze from the lad’s face.

“Richard Armstrong!” he repeated, showing for the first time intense emotion.

“Yes, sir; but I see these rascals are beginning to move. I think we had better get away before they recover their senses.”

“It’s a pity there isn’t a policeman about to take them into custody,” said Dick.

“Save me, Dick Armstrong! Save me!” he cried with a frantic eagerness that was really pitiful. “Don’t you know me? I am Luke Maslin!”

“Great Scott! Luke Maslin! What does this mean? You an associate of Tenderloin thugs! Is it possible you have got so low as this?” cried Dick, in indignant amazement.

“Save me!” almost shrieked Silas Maslin’s son, in abject terror. “They made me what I am,” and he pointed to the reviving rascals, who were no other than the man Mudgett and the Walkhill terror, Tim Bunker. “They won’t let me go home! They make me do as they want! Oh, take me away from them!”

“You know this boy?” asked the gentleman who said his name was Armstrong, grabbing Dick by the arm in a state of almost uncontrollable agitation.

“Yes, sir; that is his name. He is the son of the man with whom I lived almost all my life—Silas Maslin, of Cobham’s Corner.”

“Silas Maslin!” exclaimed the gentleman, in great excitement. “Did he not once live at Franconia, New Hampshire?”

“And you are the boy who at the age of five was left in his care and never was called for?”

“Because I am the man who left you with Mr. Maslin. I am your father, George Armstrong, and you are the son I have searched for for years, but could gain no trace of. My boy—my dear, dear boy, this is a strange, though none the less a providential meeting.”

He held out his arms to Dick, and the lad, though of course it could not be expected that he had retained any recollection of his parent, instinctively felt that this man was indeed the father he had long yearned to know, but hardly expected to see in this world.

Needless to say the two embraced right there in the street, to the silent wonder of Jennie Nesbitt and young Maslin, neither of whom quite comprehended the meaning of it all.

At this interesting juncture Mudgett sat up and stared around him like one recovering from an ugly dream, while almost at the same moment, a big policeman came sauntering around the corner, swinging his club negligently to and fro as if such a thing as trouble on his beat was very far from his thoughts.

“Take this card and call upon me to-morrow, and I will see that you get home to your people,” he replied. “Let him go—father.”

It was the first time he had addressed Mr. Armstrong by that title, and it sounded strange on his lips.

The gentleman stepped aside, and Luke flew up the street like a frightened deer.

This strange proceeding attracted the officer’s attention, and he got active and alert at once.

“Officer,” said Mr. Armstrong, in a commanding tone, “arrest these two rascals. They assaulted me with intent to rob. I am stopping at the Normandie and will appear against them in the morning. Here is my card.”

“How about that fellow running up the street?” asked the policeman, sharply.

“I’ll have to ask you to step around with us to the station,” said the officer as he jerked the reviving Tim Bunker to his feet with one hand and with the other secured a strong grasp on Mudgett’s coat collar.

“Very well,” acquiesced Mr. Armstrong, with no little reluctance. “Come to the Hotel Normandie, my son, after you have taken the young lady home.”

“Why, Dick!” exclaimed Jennie, when they were once more alone and headed for the elevated station again. “Please tell me what this means. Is this gentleman really your father? I thought you told us your father was dead.”

“So I did, and so I supposed he was,” replied the boy, whose feelings were a mixture of joy and bewilderment over this strange and unexpected discovery.

And on the way to her home, in Seventy-second Street, he told her what he had learned about his parentage from the old diary once kept by Silas Maslin, which he had found in the attic of the storekeeper’s house at Cobham’s Corner.

“It was but a bare outline of one short week in my young life’s history,” he said in conclusion, “but it gave me the key to the mystery which had till that moment surrounded my parentage—the secret the Maslins never divulged for reasons of their own. But I shall soon know all. Yes,” cried the boy, tears of wistful eagerness stealing into his fine eyes, “to-night before I sleep I shall know who my mother was—for something tells me she is not alive—that she died long, long ago, probably about the time my father carried me to Franconia.”

Jennie was much affected and treated him with a sympathetic gentleness that warmed his heart toward her more than ever.

“You must bring your father to see us, Dick, very soon. Remember, we are all interested in you and whatever concerns you. You will do this, won’t you?” she said, laying her hand on his arm as they stood at the outside entrance of her home.

“Yes,” said the boy, with glistening eyes, “I will. He will be glad to know those who have been so kind to me. Do you know,” he cried with impetuous suddenness, “I wish you were my sister?”

However, in the excitement of the moment, and, considering what he had just passed through he might be well excused, he did a very audacious thing.

Then, realizing the enormity of his offence, he blurted out a hasty “Good night!” and flew down the stoop, leaving the lovely little blonde in a state of happy confusion we will not attempt to describe.

An hour later Dick was seated with his father in an elegant room on the third floor of the Hotel Normandie, listening to the story that father had to tell.

She had passed away on the eve of a financial panic in Boston which had wrecked his father’s business and temporarily clouded his name with a suspicion of unfair commercial methods.

Nearly crazed by the loss of his wife, not to mention his business reverses, Mr. Armstrong in the first days of his misery fled to the recesses of New Hampshire, taking his only boy with him.

“I was shortly summoned back from Franconia by a committee of my creditors, with whom I succeeded in making a partial arrangement contingent on the success of certain mining interests I had in the West,” said Mr. Armstrong. “I sent Mr. Maslin one hundred dollars to defray your board for a certain length of time, for I could not return to you immediately as it was urgently necessary I should go at once to Colorado. Afterward I sent him other sums from the West for a like purpose. It was five years before I found myself able to return East. While not rich, I had done very well and my prospects were bright, my business troubles of the past having been entirely wiped out. When I went to Franconia I found the Maslins had moved away a short time before, leaving no clue to their new address, and from that hour to this day I never obtained a clue, even by the assistance of paid detectives, to their new home.”

“And yet, father, all the time they were living at Cobham’s Corner, on the Erie Canal, and I was living with them, not as a boy whose board had ever been paid, but as a friendless slave of never-ending toil,” said Dick, more indignant than ever at the unfair treatment he had experienced at the hands of Silas Maslin and his wife.

“The unfeeling rascal!” exclaimed Mr. Armstrong. “But he and I will have a reckoning that will not tend to his advantage.”

Notwithstanding this new phase of Mr. Maslin’s duplicity, Dick did not fail to give Luke, his wayward son, the necessary money to take him home, when that repentant young man called to see him next morning at Mr. Nesbitt’s offices.

Probably the most excited as well as delighted young fellow in New York next day was Joe Fletcher when his stanch friend and chum told him the news that he had actually found his father—now a millionaire mine-owner.

“I never was so glad at anything in my whole life, Dick, old boy,” he cried, with a beaming face. And then he stopped, and his countenance suddenly clouded. “Perhaps a seven-dollar-a-week produce clerk is hardly a fit companion for the son of the wealthy Mr. Armstrong. It will break my heart to lose you, Dick, but at least it will be a satisfaction to know you’ve reached your proper station.”

“Don’t you talk nonsense, Joe,” said Dick, grasping his hand with a feeling that could not be mistaken. “Chums we’ve been in adversity, and so shall we remain in the days when prosperity has overtaken one of us at least. Glad as I am to recover my father, I am proud to say that, without any help from him and but little in a business sense from even Mr. Nesbitt, I have succeeded in making my way to the front, even if I am only seventeen years old.”

And there were others who also coincided with this opinion, the Nesbitts, for instance, and Jennie more than her parents, for a few years later she gave her hand where she had long since given her heart—to Dick Armstrong, the BOY WHO SUCCEEDED.

Read “A CORNER IN CORN; OR, HOW A CHICAGO BOY DID THE TRICK,” which will be the next number (3) of “Fame and Fortune Weekly.”

SPECIAL NOTICE: All back numbers of this weekly are always in print. If you cannot obtain them from any newsdealer, send the price in money or postage stamps by mail to FRANK TOUSEY, PUBLISHER, 24 UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, and you will receive the copies you order by return mail.

All of these exciting stories are founded on facts. Young Wild West is a hero with whom the author was acquainted. His daring deeds and thrilling adventures have never been surpassed. They form the base of the most dashing stories ever published.

LATEST ISSUES:

100 Young Wild West and the Double Deuce; or, The Domino Gang of Denver.
101 Young Wild West on the Prairie; or, The Trail that had no End.
102 Young Wild West and “Missouri Mike”; or, The Worst Man in Wyoming.
103 Young Wild West at the Golden Gate; or, A Business Trip to ’Frisco.
104 Young Wild West and the Redskin Raiders; or, Arietta’s Leap for Life.
105 Young Wild West’s Cowboy Circus; or, Fun at the Mining Camps.
106 Young Wild West at Pike’s Peak; or, Arietta’s Strange Disappearance.
107 Young Wild West’s Six Shots, and the Change They Made at Dead Man’s Mark.
108 Young Wild West at the Little Big Horn; or, The Last Stand of the Cavalry.
109 Young Wild West’s Big Bluff; or, Playing a Lone Hand.
110 Young Wild West at Bowie Bend; or, The Ban of the Bandit Band.
111 Young Wild West’s Ton of Gold; or, The Accident to Arietta.
112 Young Wild West’s Green Corn Dance; or, A Lively Time with the Pawnees.
113 Young Wild West and the Cowboy King; or, Taming a Texas Terror.
114 Young Wild West’s Pocket of Gold; or, Arietta’s Great Discovery.
115 Young Wild West and “Shawnee Sam”; or, The Half-Breed’s Treachery.
116 Young Wild West’s Covered Trail; or, Arietta and the Avalanche.
117 Young Wild West and the Diamond Dagger; or, The Mexican Girl’s Revenge.
118 Young Wild West at Silver Shine; or, A Town Run by “Tenderfeet.”
119 Young Wild West Surrounded by Sioux; or, Arietta and the Aeronaut.
120 Young Wild West and the “Puzzle of the Camp”; or, The Girl Who Owned the Gulch.
121 Young Wild West and the Mustangers; or, The Boss of the Broncho Busters.
122 Young Wild West after the Apaches; or, Arietta’s Arizona Adventure.
123 Young Wild West Routing the Robbers; or, Saving Two Million Dollars.
124 Young Wild West at Rattlesnake Run; or, Arietta’s Deal with Death.
125 Young Wild West’s Winning Streak; or, A Straight Trail to Tombstone.
126 Young Wild West’s Lightning Lariat; or, Arietta and the Road Agents.
127 Young Wild West’s Red-Hot Ride; or, Pursued by Comanches.
128 Young Wild West and the Blazed Trail; or, Arietta as a Scout.
129 Young Wild West’s Four of a Kind; or, A Curious Combination.
130 Young Wild West Caught by the Crooks; or, Arietta on Hand.
131 Young Wild West and the Ten Terrors; or, The Doom of Dashing Dan.
132 Young Wild West’s Barrel of “Dust”; or, Arietta’s Chance Shot.
133 Young Wild West’s Triple Claim; or, Simple Sam, the “Sundowner.”
134 Young Wild West’s Curious Compact; or, Arietta as an Avenger.
135 Young Wild West’s Wampum Belt; or, Under the Ban of the Utes.
136 Young Wild West and the Rio Grande Rustlers; or, The Branding at Buckhorn Ranch.
137 Young Wild West and the Line League; or, Arietta Among the Smugglers.
138 Young Wild West’s Silver Spurs; or, Fun at Fairplay Fair.
139 Young Wild West Among the Blackfeet; or, Arietta as a Sorceress.
140 Young Wild West on the Yellowstone; or, The Secret of the Hidden Cave.
141 Young Wild West’s Deadly Aim; or, Arietta’s Greatest Danger.
142 Young Wild West at the “Jumping Off” Place; or, The Worst Camp in the West.
143 Young Wild West and the “Mixed-Up” Mine; or, Arietta a Winner.
144 Young Wild West’s Hundred Mile Race; or, Beating a Big Bunch.
145 Young Wild West Daring the Danites; or, The Search for a Missing Girl.
146 Young Wild West’s Lively Time; or, The Dandy Duck of the Diggings.
147 Young Wild West at Hold-Up Canyon; or, Arietta’s Great Victory.
148 Young Wild West’s Square Deal; or, Making the “Bad” Men Good.
149 Young Wild West Cowing the Cowboys; or, Arietta and the Prairie Fire.
150 Young Wild West and Navajo Ned; or, The Hunt for the Half-Breed Hermit.
151 Young Wild West’s Virgin Vein; or, Arietta and the Cave-in.
152 Young Wild West’s Cowboy Champions; or, The Trip to Kansas City.
153 Young Wild West’s Even Chance; or, Arietta’s Presence of Mind.
154 Young Wild West and the Flattened Bullet; or, The Man Who Would not Drop.
155 Young Wild West’s Gold Game; or, Arietta’s Full Hand.
156 Young Wild West’s Cowboy Scrimmage; or, Cooking a Crowd of Crooks.

For sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address on receipt of price, 5 cents per copy, in money or postage stamps, by

IF YOU WANT ANY BACK NUMBERS

of our Libraries and cannot procure them from newsdealers, they can be obtained from this office direct. Cut out and fill in the following Order Blank and send it to us with the price of the books you want and we will send them to you by return mail.

FRANK TOUSEY, Publisher, 24 Union Square, New York. ......190
Dear Sir —Enclosed find......cents for which please send me:
....copies of WORK AND WIN, Nos........................................
....copies of WILD WEST WEEKLY, Nos....................................
....copies of THE LIBERTY BOYS OF ’76, Nos.............................
....copies of PLUCK AND LUCK, Nos......................................
....copies of SECRET SERVICE, Nos......................................
....copies of THE YOUNG ATHLETE’S WEEKLY, Nos..........................
....copies of Ten-Cent Hand Books, Nos.................................
Name.................Street and No................Town..........State..

Each book consists of sixty-four pages, printed on good paper, in clear type and neatly bound in an attractive, illustrated cover. Most of the books are also profusely illustrated, and all of the subjects treated upon are explained in such a simple manner that any child can thoroughly understand them. Look over the list as classified and see if you want to know anything about the subjects mentioned.

THESE BOOKS ARE FOR SALE BY ALL NEWSDEALERS OR WILL BE SENT BY MAIL TO ANY ADDRESS FROM THIS OFFICE ON RECEIPT OF PRICE, TEN CENTS EACH, OR ANY THREE BOOKS FOR TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. POSTAGE STAMPS TAKEN THE SAME AS MONEY. Address FRANK TOUSEY, Publisher, 24 Union Square, N.Y.

MESMERISM.

No. 81. HOW TO MESMERIZE.—Containing the most approved methods of mesmerism; also how to cure all kinds of diseases by animal magnetism, or, magnetic healing. By Prof. Leo Hugo Koch, A. C. S., author of “How to Hypnotize,” etc.

PALMISTRY.

No. 82. HOW TO DO PALMISTRY.—Containing the most approved methods of reading the lines on the hand, together with a full explanation of their meaning. Also explaining phrenology, and the key for telling character by the bumps on the head. By Leo Hugo Koch, A. C. S. Fully illustrated.

HYPNOTISM.

No. 83. HOW TO HYPNOTIZE.—Containing valuable and instructive information regarding the science of hypnotism. Also explaining the most approved methods which are employed by the leading hypnotists of the world. By Leo Hugo Koch, A. C. S.

SPORTING.

No. 21. HOW TO HUNT AND FISH.—The most complete hunting and fishing guide ever published. It contains full instructions about guns, hunting dogs, traps, trapping and fishing, together with descriptions of game and fish.

No. 26. HOW TO ROW, SAIL AND BUILD A BOAT.—Fully illustrated. Every boy should know how to row and sail a boat. Full instructions are given in this little book, together with instructions on swimming and riding, companion sports to boating.

No. 47. HOW TO BREAK, RIDE AND DRIVE A HORSE.—A complete treatise on the horse. Describing the most useful horses for business, the best horses for the road; also valuable recipes for diseases peculiar to the horse.

No. 48. HOW TO BUILD AND SAIL CANOES.—A handy book for boys, containing full directions for constructing canoes and the most popular manner of sailing them. Fully illustrated. By C. Stansfield Hicks.

FORTUNE TELLING.

No. 1. NAPOLEON’S ORACULUM AND DREAM BOOK.—Containing the great oracle of human destiny; also the true meaning of almost any kind of dreams, together with charms, ceremonies, and curious games of cards. A complete book.

No. 23. HOW TO EXPLAIN DREAMS.—Everybody dreams, from the little child to the aged man and woman. This little book gives the explanation to all kinds of dreams, together with lucky and unlucky days, and “Napoleon’s Oraculum,” the book of fate.

No. 28. HOW TO TELL FORTUNES.—Everyone is desirous of knowing what his future life will bring forth, whether happiness or misery, wealth or poverty. You can tell by a glance at this little book. Buy one and be convinced. Tell your own fortune. Tell the fortune of your friends.

No. 76. HOW TO TELL FORTUNES BY THE HAND.—Containing rules for telling fortunes by the aid of lines of the hand, or the secret of palmistry. Also the secret of telling future events by aid of moles, marks, scars, etc. Illustrated. By A. Anderson.

ATHLETIC.

No. 6. HOW TO BECOME AN ATHLETE.—Giving full instruction for the use of dumb bells, Indian clubs, parallel bars, horizontal bars and various other methods of developing a good, healthy muscle; containing over sixty illustrations. Every boy can become strong and healthy by following the instructions contained in this little book.

No. 10. HOW TO BOX.—The art of self-defense made easy. Containing over thirty illustrations of guards, blows, and the different positions of a good boxer. Every boy should obtain one of these useful and instructive books, as it will teach you how to box without an instructor.

No. 25. HOW TO BECOME A GYMNAST.—Containing full instructions for all kinds of gymnastic sports and athletic exercises. Embracing thirty-five illustrations. By Professor W. Macdonald. A handy and useful book.

No. 34. HOW TO FENCE.—Containing full instruction for fencing and the use of the broadsword; also instruction in archery. Described with twenty-one practical illustrations, giving the best positions in fencing. A complete book.

TRICKS WITH CARDS.

No. 51. HOW TO DO TRICKS WITH CARDS.—Containing explanations of the general principles of sleight-of-hand applicable to card tricks; of card tricks with ordinary cards, and not requiring sleight-of-hand; of tricks involving sleight-of-hand, or the use of specially prepared cards. By Professor Haffner. Illustrated.

No. 72. HOW TO DO SIXTY TRICKS WITH CARDS.—Embracing all of the latest and most deceptive card tricks, with illustrations. By A. Anderson.

No. 77. HOW TO DO FORTY TRICKS WITH CARDS.—Containing deceptive Card Tricks as performed by leading conjurors and magicians. Arranged for home amusement. Fully illustrated.

MAGIC.

No. 2. HOW TO DO TRICKS.—The great book of magic and card tricks, containing full instruction on all the leading card tricks of the day, also the most popular magical illusions as performed by our leading magicians; every boy should obtain a copy of this book, as it will both amuse and instruct.

No. 22. HOW TO DO SECOND SIGHT.—Heller’s second sight explained by his former assistant, Fred Hunt, Jr. Explaining how the secret dialogues were carried on between the magician and the boy on the stage; also giving all the codes and signals. The only authentic explanation of second sight.

No. 43. HOW TO BECOME A MAGICIAN.—Containing the grandest assortment of magical illusions ever placed before the public. Also tricks with cards, incantations, etc.

No. 68. HOW TO DO CHEMICAL TRICKS.—Containing over one hundred highly amusing and instructive tricks with chemicals. By A. Anderson. Handsomely illustrated.

No. 69. HOW TO DO SLEIGHT OF HAND.—Containing over fifty of the latest and best tricks used by magicians. Also containing the secret of second sight. Fully illustrated. By A. Anderson.

No. 70. HOW TO MAKE MAGIC TOYS.—Containing full directions for making Magic Toys and devices of many kinds. By A. Anderson. Fully illustrated.

No. 73. HOW TO DO TRICKS WITH NUMBERS.—Showing many curious tricks with figures and the magic of numbers. By A. Anderson. Fully illustrated.

No. 75. HOW TO BECOME A CONJUROR.—Containing tricks with Dominos, Dice, Cups and Balls, Hats, etc. Embracing thirty-six illustrations. By A. Anderson.

No. 78. HOW TO DO THE BLACK ART.—Containing a complete description of the mysteries of Magic and Sleight of Hand, together with many wonderful experiments. By A. Anderson. Illustrated.

MECHANICAL.

No. 29. HOW TO BECOME AN INVENTOR.—Every boy should know how inventions originated. This book explains them all, giving examples in electricity, hydraulics, magnetism, optics, pneumatics, mechanics, etc. The most instructive book published.

No. 56. HOW TO BECOME AN ENGINEER.—Containing full instructions how to proceed in order to become a locomotive engineer; also directions for building a model locomotive; together with a full description of everything an engineer should know.

No. 57. HOW TO MAKE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.—Full directions how to make a Banjo, Violin, Zither, Æolian Harp, Xylophone and other musical instruments; together with a brief description of nearly every musical instrument used in ancient or modern times. Profusely illustrated. By Algernon S. Fitzgerald, for twenty years bandmaster of the Royal Bengal Marines.

No. 59. HOW TO MAKE A MAGIC LANTERN.—Containing a description of the lantern, together with its history and invention. Also full directions for its use and for painting slides. Handsomely illustrated. By John Allen.

No. 71. HOW TO DO MECHANICAL TRICKS.—Containing complete instructions for performing over sixty Mechanical Tricks. By A. Anderson. Fully illustrated.

LETTER WRITING.

No. 11. HOW TO WRITE LOVE-LETTERS.—A most complete little book, containing full directions for writing love-letters, and when to use them, giving specimen letters for young and old.

No. 12. HOW TO WRITE LETTERS TO LADIES.—Giving complete instructions for writing letters to ladies on all subjects; also letters of introduction, notes and requests.

No. 24. HOW TO WRITE LETTERS TO GENTLEMEN.—Containing full directions for writing to gentlemen on all subjects; also giving sample letters for instruction.

No. 53. HOW TO WRITE LETTERS.—A wonderful little book, telling you how to write to your sweetheart, your father, mother, sister, brother, employer; and, in fact, everybody and anybody you wish to write to. Every young man and every young lady in the land should have this book.

No. 74. HOW TO WRITE LETTERS CORRECTLY.—Containing full instructions for writing letters on almost any subject; also rules for punctuation and composition, with specimen letters.

THE STAGE.

No. 41. THE BOYS OF NEW YORK END MEN’S JOKE BOOK.—Containing a great variety of the latest jokes used by the most famous end men. No amateur minstrel is complete without this wonderful little book.

No. 42. THE BOYS OF NEW YORK STUMP SPEAKER.—Containing a varied assortment of stump speeches, Negro, Dutch and Irish. Also end men’s jokes. Just the thing for home amusement and amateur shows.

No. 45. THE BOYS OF NEW YORK MINSTREL GUIDE AND JOKE BOOK.—Something new and very instructive. Every boy should obtain this book, as it contains full instructions for organizing an amateur minstrel troupe.

No. 65. MULDOON’S JOKES.—This is one of the most original joke books ever published, and it is brimful of wit and humor. It contains a large collection of songs, jokes, conundrums, etc., of Terrence Muldoon, the great wit, humorist, and practical joker of the day. Every boy who can enjoy a good substantial joke should obtain a copy immediately.

No. 79. HOW TO BECOME AN ACTOR.—Containing complete instructions how to make up for various characters on the stage; together with the duties of the Stage Manager, Prompter, Scenic Artist and Property Man. By a prominent Stage Manager.

No. 80. GUS WILLIAMS’ JOKE BOOK.—Containing the latest jokes, anecdotes and funny stories of this world-renowned and ever popular German comedian. Sixty-four pages; handsome colored cover containing a half-tone photo of the author.

HOUSEKEEPING.

No. 16. HOW TO KEEP A WINDOW GARDEN.—Containing full instructions for constructing a window garden either in town or country, and the most approved methods for raising beautiful flowers at home. The most complete book of the kind ever published.

No. 30. HOW TO COOK.—One of the most instructive books on cooking ever published. It contains recipes for cooking meats, fish, game, and oysters; also pies, puddings, cakes and all kinds of pastry, and a grand collection of recipes by one of our most popular cooks.

No. 37. HOW TO KEEP HOUSE.—It contains information for everybody, boys, girls, men and women; it will teach you how to make almost anything around the house, such as parlor ornaments, brackets, cements, Aeolian harps, and bird lime for catching birds.

ELECTRICAL.

No. 46. HOW TO MAKE AND USE ELECTRICITY.—A description of the wonderful uses of electricity and electro magnetism; together with full instructions for making Electric Toys, Batteries, etc. By George Trebel, A. M., M. D. Containing over fifty illustrations.

No. 64. HOW TO MAKE ELECTRICAL MACHINES.—Containing full directions for making electrical machines, induction coils, dynamos, and many novel toys to be worked by electricity. By R. A. R. Bennett. Fully illustrated.

No. 67. HOW TO DO ELECTRICAL TRICKS.—Containing a large collection of instructive and highly amusing electrical tricks, together with illustrations. By A. Anderson.

ENTERTAINMENT.

No. 9. HOW TO BECOME A VENTRILOQUIST.—By Harry Kennedy. The secret given away. Every intelligent boy reading this book of instructions, by a practical professor (delighting multitudes every night with his wonderful imitations), can master the art, and create any amount of fun for himself and friends. It is the greatest book ever published, and there’s millions (of fun) in it.

No. 20. HOW TO ENTERTAIN AN EVENING PARTY.—A very valuable little book just published. A complete compendium of games, sports, card diversions, comic recitations, etc., suitable for parlor or drawing-room entertainment. It contains more for the money than any book published.

No. 35. HOW TO PLAY GAMES.—A complete and useful little book, containing the rules and regulations of billiards, bagatelle, backgammon, croquet, dominoes, etc.

No. 36. HOW TO SOLVE CONUNDRUMS.—Containing all the leading conundrums of the day, amusing riddles, curious catches and witty sayings.

No. 52. HOW TO PLAY CARDS.—A complete and handy little book, giving the rules and full directions for playing Euchre, Cribbage, Casino, Forty-Five, Rounce, Pedro Sancho, Draw Poker, Auction Pitch, All Fours, and many other popular games of cards.

No. 66. HOW TO DO PUZZLES.—Containing over three hundred interesting puzzles and conundrums, with key to same. A complete book. Fully illustrated. By A. Anderson.

ETIQUETTE.

No. 13. HOW TO DO IT; OR, BOOK OF ETIQUETTE.—It is a great life secret, and one that every young man desires to know all about. There’s happiness in it.

No. 33. HOW TO BEHAVE.—Containing the rules and etiquette of good society and the easiest and most approved methods of appearing to good advantage at parties, balls, the theatre, church, and in the drawing-room.

DECLAMATION.

No. 27. HOW TO RECITE AND BOOK OF RECITATIONS.—Containing the most popular selections in use, comprising Dutch dialect, French dialect, Yankee and Irish dialect pieces, together with many standard readings.

No. 31. HOW TO BECOME A SPEAKER.—Containing fourteen illustrations, giving the different positions requisite to become a good speaker, reader and elocutionist. Also containing gems from all the popular authors of prose and poetry, arranged in the most simple and concise manner possible.

No. 49. HOW TO DEBATE.—Giving rules for conducting debates, outlines for debates, questions for discussion, and the best sources for procuring information on the questions given.

SOCIETY.

No. 3. HOW TO FLIRT.—The arts and wiles of flirtation are fully explained by this little book. Besides the various methods of handkerchief, fan, glove, parasol, window and hat flirtation, it contains a full list of the language and sentiment of flowers, which is interesting to everybody, both old and young. You cannot be happy without one.

No. 4. HOW TO DANCE is the title of a new and handsome little book just issued by Frank Tousey. It contains full instructions in the art of dancing, etiquette in the ball-room and at parties, how to dress, and full directions for calling off in all popular square dances.

No. 5. HOW TO MAKE LOVE.—A complete guide to love, courtship and marriage, giving sensible advice, rules and etiquette to be observed, with many curious and interesting things not generally known.

No. 17. HOW TO DRESS.—Containing full instruction in the art of dressing and appearing well at home and abroad, giving the selections of colors, material, and how to have them made up.

No. 18. HOW TO BECOME BEAUTIFUL.—One of the brightest and most valuable little books ever given to the world. Everybody wishes to know how to become beautiful, both male and female. The secret is simple, and almost costless. Read this book and be convinced how to become beautiful.

BIRDS AND ANIMALS.

No. 7. HOW TO KEEP BIRDS.—Handsomely illustrated and containing full instructions for the management and training of the canary, mockingbird, bobolink, blackbird, paroquet, parrot, etc.

No. 39. HOW TO RAISE DOGS, POULTRY, PIGEONS AND RABBITS.—A useful and instructive book. Handsomely illustrated. By Ira Drofraw.

No. 40. HOW TO MAKE AND SET TRAPS.—Including hints on how to catch moles, weasels, otters, rats, squirrels and birds. Also how to cure skins. Copiously illustrated. By J. Harrington Keene.

No. 50. HOW TO STUFF BIRDS AND ANIMALS.—A valuable book, giving instructions in collecting, preparing, mounting and preserving birds, animals and insects.

No. 54. HOW TO KEEP AND MANAGE PETS.—Giving complete information as to the manner and method of raising, keeping, taming, breeding, and managing all kinds of pets; also giving full instructions for making cages, etc. Fully explained by twenty-eight illustrations, making it the most complete book of the kind ever published.

MISCELLANEOUS.

No. 8. HOW TO BECOME A SCIENTIST.—A useful and instructive book, giving a complete treatise on chemistry; also experiments in acoustics, mechanics, mathematics, chemistry, and directions for making fireworks, colored fires, and gas balloons. This book cannot be equaled.

No. 14. HOW TO MAKE CANDY.—A complete hand-book for making all kinds of candy, ice-cream, syrups, essences, etc., etc.

No. 34. HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR.—Containing full information regarding choice of subjects, the use of words and the manner of preparing and submitting manuscript. Also containing valuable information as to the neatness, legibility and general composition of manuscript, essential to a successful author. By Prince Hiland.

No. 38. HOW TO BECOME YOUR OWN DOCTOR.—A wonderful book, containing useful and practical information in the treatment of ordinary diseases and ailments common to every family. Abounding in useful and effective recipes for general complaints.

No. 55. HOW TO COLLECT STAMPS AND COINS.—Containing valuable information regarding the collecting and arranging of stamps and coins. Handsomely illustrated.

No. 58. HOW TO BE A DETECTIVE.—By Old King Brady, the world-known detective. In which he lays down some valuable and sensible rules for beginners, and also relates some adventures and experiences of well-known detectives.

No. 60. HOW TO BECOME A PHOTOGRAPHER.—Containing useful information regarding the Camera and how to work it; also how to make Photographic Magic Lantern Slides and other Transparencies. Handsomely illustrated. By Captain W. De W. Abney.

No. 62. HOW TO BECOME A WEST POINT MILITARY CADET.—Containing full explanations how to gain admittance, course of Study, Examinations, Duties, Staff of Officers, Post Guard, Police Regulations, Fire Department, and all a boy should know to be a Cadet. Compiled and written by Lu Senarens, author of “How to Become a Naval Cadet.”

No. 63. HOW TO BECOME A NAVAL CADET.—Complete instructions of how to gain admission to the Annapolis Naval Academy. Also containing the course of instruction, description of grounds and buildings, historical sketch, and everything a boy should know to become an officer in the United States Navy. Compiled and written by Lu Senarens, author of “How to Become a West Point Military Cadet.”

These intensely interesting stories describe the adventures of Frank Manley, a plucky young athlete, who tries to excel in all kinds of games and pastimes. Each number contains a story of manly sports, replete with lively incidents, dramatic situations and a sparkle of humor. Every popular game will be featured in the succeeding stories, such as baseball, skating, wrestling, etc. Not only are these stories the very best, but they teach you how to become strong and healthy. You can learn to become a trained athlete by reading the valuable information on physical culture they contain. From time to time the wonderful Japanese methods of self-protection, called Jiu-Jitsu, will be explained. A page is devoted to advice on healthy exercises, and questions on athletic subjects are cheerfully answered by the author “PHYSICAL DIRECTOR.”

No. 1 Frank Manley’s Real Fight; or, What the Push-ball Game Brought About.
No. 2 Frank Manley’s Lightning Track; or, Speed’s Part in a Great Crisis.
No. 3 Frank Manley’s Amazing Vault; or, Pole and Brains in Deadly Earnest.
No. 4 Frank Manley’s Gridiron Grill; or, The Try-Out for Football Grit.
No. 5 Frank Manley’s Great Line-Up; or, The Woodstock Eleven on the Jump.
No. 6 Frank Manley’s Prize Tackle; or, The Football Tactics that Won.
No. 7 Frank Manley’s Mad Scrimmage; or, The Trick that Dazed Bradford.
No. 8 Frank Manley’s Lion-Hearted Rush; or, Staking Life on the Outcome.

For sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address on receipt of price, 5 cents per copy, in money or postage stamps, by

LATEST ISSUES:

8 Frank Manley’s Human Ladder; or, The Quickest Climb on Record.
9 Frank Manley’s Protege; or, Jack Winston, Great Little Athlete.
10 Frank Manley’s Off Day; or, The Greatest Strain in His Career.
11 Frank Manley on Deck; or, At Work at Indoor Baseball.
12 Frank Manley At the Bat; or, “The Up-and-at-’em Boys” on the Diamond.
13 Frank Manley’s Hard Home Hit; or, The Play That Surprised the Bradfords.
14 Frank Manley in the Box; or, The Curve That Rattled Bradford.
15 Frank Manley’s Scratch Hit; or, The Luck of “The Up-and-at-’em Boys.”
16 Frank Manley’s Double Play; or, The Game That Brought Fortune.
17 Frank Manley’s All-around Game; or, Playing All the Nine Positions.
18 Frank Manley’s Eight-Oared Crew; or, Tod Owen’s Decoration Day Regatta.
19 Frank Manley’s Earned Run; or, The Sprint That Won a Cup.
20 Frank Manley’s Triple Play; or, The Only Hope of the Nine.
21 Frank Manley’s Training Table; or, Whipping the Nine into Shape.
22 Frank Manley’s Coaching; or, The Great Game that “Jackets” Pitched.
23 Frank Manley’s First League Game; or, The Fourth of July Battle With Bradford.
24 Frank Manley’s Match with Giants; or, The Great Game With the Alton “Grown-Ups.”
25 Frank Manley’s Training Camp; or, Getting in Trim for the Greatest Ball Game.
26 Frank Manley’s Substitute Nine; or, A Game of Pure Grit.
27 Frank Manley’s Longest Swim; or, Battling with Bradford in the Water.
28 Frank Manley’s Bunch of Hits; or, Breaking the Season’s Batting Record.
29 Frank Manley’s Double Game; or, The Wonderful Four-Team Match.
30 Frank Manley’s Summer Meet; or, “Trying Out” the Bradfords.
31 Frank Manley at His Wits’ End; or, Playing Against a Bribed Umpire.
32 Frank Manley’s Last Ball Game; or, The Season’s Exciting Good-Bye to the Diamond.

For sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address on receipt of price, 5 cents per copy, in money or postage stamps, by

IF YOU WANT ANY BACK NUMBERS

FRANK TOUSEY, Publisher, 24 Union Square, New York. ......190
Dear Sir —Enclosed find......cents for which please send me:
....copies of WORK AND WIN, Nos........................................
....copies of FRANK MANLEY’S WEEKLY, Nos...............................
....copies of WILD WEST WEEKLY, Nos....................................
....copies of THE LIBERTY BOYS OF ’76, Nos.............................
....copies of PLUCK AND LUCK, Nos......................................
....copies of SECRET SERVICE, Nos......................................
....copies of THE YOUNG ATHLETE’S WEEKLY, Nos..........................
....copies of Ten-Cent Hand Books, Nos.................................
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This Weekly contains interesting stories of smart boys, who win fame and fortune by their ability to take advantage of passing opportunities. Some of these stories are founded on true incidents in the lives of our most successful self-made men, and show how a boy of pluck, perseverance and brains can become famous and wealthy. Every one of this series contains a good moral tone, which makes “Fame and Fortune Weekly” a magazine for the home, although each number is replete with exciting adventures. The stories are the very best obtainable, the illustrations are by expert artists, and every effort is constantly being made to make it the best weekly on the news stands. Tell your friends about it.

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No. 1.—A Lucky Deal; or, The Cutest Boy in Wall Street	Issued Oct.	6th
No. 2.—Born to Good Luck; or, The Boy Who Succeeded	Issued Oct.	13th
No. 3.—A Corner in Corn; or, How a Chicago Boy Did the Trick	Issued Oct.	20th
No. 4.—A Game of Chance; or, The Boy Who Won Out	Issued Oct.	27th
No. 5.—Hard to Beat; or, The Cleverest Boy in Wall Street	Issued Nov.	3rd
No. 6.—Building a Railroad; or, The Young Contractors of Lakeview	Issued Nov.	10th
No. 7.—Winning His Way; or, The Youngest Editor in Green River	Issued Nov.	17th
No. 8.—The Wheel of Fortune; or, The Record of a Self-Made Boy	Issued Nov.	24th

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Born to Good Luck; or The Boy Who Succeeded.

Fame and Fortune Weekly

BORN TO GOOD LUCK; OR The Boy Who Succeeded.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

WILD WEST WEEKLY A Magazine Containing Stories, Sketches, etc., of Western Life.

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These Books Tell You Everything!

MESMERISM.

PALMISTRY.

HYPNOTISM.

SPORTING.

FORTUNE TELLING.

ATHLETIC.

TRICKS WITH CARDS.

MAGIC.

MECHANICAL.

LETTER WRITING.

THE STAGE.

HOUSEKEEPING.

ELECTRICAL.

ENTERTAINMENT.

ETIQUETTE.

DECLAMATION.

SOCIETY.

BIRDS AND ANIMALS.

MISCELLANEOUS.

FRANK MANLEY’S WEEKLY Good Stories of Young Athletes

The Young Athlete’s Weekly

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Fame and Fortune Weekly STORIES OF BOYS WHO MAKE MONEY

THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF THE FIRST EIGHT TITLES AND DATES OF ISSUE

IF YOU WANT ANY BACK NUMBERS

Transcriber’s Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

BORN TO GOOD LUCK;
OR
The Boy Who Succeeded.

WILD WEST WEEKLY
A Magazine Containing Stories, Sketches, etc., of Western Life.

FRANK MANLEY’S WEEKLY
Good Stories of Young Athletes

Fame and Fortune Weekly
STORIES OF BOYS WHO MAKE MONEY