Frank’s face clouded slightly as he crossed the yard and his eye fell on an empty dog house. It made Frank feel lonesome and worried to realize that its former tenant, the dog, Christmas, was missing.
The faithful animal, a veritable chum to Frank, had disappeared one night. Frank had spent two days looking for him with no results.
Christmas was a connecting link between the present and a very vivid section of the past in Frank Newton’s experience. The thought of this instantly sent Frank’s mind drifting among the vital and exciting incidents in that career.
Frank was a peculiar boy. He had great sturdiness of character, what some people call “nerve,” and up to two years before our story begins had led a happy, joyous existence. He had been an active spirit, and always a leader in boyish sports and fun.
It had been a black day for Frank when his mother had married Ismond. Too late Mrs. Newton had learned that she had wedded a fortune-hunter. Too soon Frank discovered that the miserable schemer planned to drive him away from home, so he might more easily rob the lad’s mother of her fortune.
Frank stood Ismond’s abuse just as long as he could. Then he ran away from home.
At first he followed a circus, tired of it, and got a job tending a lemonade stand at an ocean resort. He made all sorts of acquaintances, good and bad. The latter did not demoralize him, but they did harden him. He grew to be a cynical, unhappy boy.
In his wanderings Frank brought up at a town called Pleasantville. This was the home of Bart Stirling, the hero of another volume of this series, “Bart Stirling’s Road to Success,” and of Darry and Bob Haven, whose stirring careers my former readers have followed in the volume entitled, “Working Hard to Win.”
Frank arrived at Pleasantville in the company of two men, who had devised a great fraud upon the meanest but richest man in the place, Colonel Harrington. In disgust of their swindling ways, Frank destroyed the papers they hoped to impose upon the colonel. In escaping from them he was severely crippled and laid up for several weeks.
Soon his money gave out. He was turned away from the village hotel for not paying his board.