CHAPTER II
A GLIMPSE OF THE PAST
As the three boys hurried to the river, Dave Porter felt that all his anticipated sport for that afternoon had been spoiled. He had been brought face to face once more with the one dark spot in his history, and his heart was filled with a bitterness which his two loyal chums could scarcely comprehend.
Dave was indeed a poorhouse boy, and of unknown parentage. When but a few years of age, he had been found one evening in the summer wandering close to the railroad tracks just outside of the village of Crumville. How he was found by some farm hands and taken to a house and fed and cared for otherwise, has already been related in the first volume of this series, entitled "Dave Porter at Oak Hall."
At first, every effort to learn his identity was made, but, this failing, he was turned over to the poorhouse authorities. He said his name was Dave, or Davy, and sometimes added Porter, and then Dun-Dun, and from this he was called Dave Porter—a name which suited him very well.
Dave remained at the poorhouse until he was about nine years old, when he was taken out of that institution by a broken-down college professor named Caspar Potts, who had turned farmer. He remained with the old professor for several years, and a warm friendship sprang up between the pair. Caspar Potts gave Dave a fair education, and, in return, the boy did all he could for the old man, who was not in the best of health, and rather eccentric at times.
Unfortunately for Professor Potts, there was in the neighborhood a hard-hearted money-lender named Aaron Poole, who had a mortgage on the old educator's farm. The money-lender had a son named Nat, who was a flippant youth, and this boy had trouble with Dave. Then the money-lender would have sold out the old professor, had not aid come opportunely from a most unexpected quarter.
In this volume it is unnecessary to go into the details of how Dave became acquainted with Mr. Oliver Wadsworth, a rich manufacturer of the neighborhood, and how the boy saved Jessie Wadsworth from being burned to death when the gasoline tank of an automobile exploded and enveloped the young miss in flames. For this service the Wadsworths were all more than grateful, and when Dave told his story Oliver Wadsworth made the discovery that Caspar Potts was one of the professors under whom he had studied in his college days.
"I must meet him and talk this over," said the rich manufacturer, and the upshot of the matter was that the professor and Dave were invited to dine at the Wadsworth mansion.