This dinner proved a turning point in the life of the poorhouse youth. Mr. Wadsworth had lost a son by death, and Dave reminded him strongly of his boy. It was arranged that Caspar Potts should come to live at the Wadsworth mansion, and that Dave should be sent to some first-class boarding school, the manufacturer agreeing to pay all bills, because of the boy's bravery in behalf of Jessie.
Oak Hall was the school selected, a fine institution, located not far from the village of Oakdale. The school was surrounded by oaks, which partly shaded a beautiful campus, and the grounds, which were on a slight hill, sloped down in the rear to the Leming River.
Dave's heart beat high when he started off for Oak Hall, and he had a curious experience before he reached that institution. The house of a Senator Morr was robbed, and the boy met the robber on the train, and, after a good deal of trouble, managed to recover a valise containing a large share of the stolen goods. This threw Dave into the company of Roger Morr, the senator's son, and the two became warm friends. Roger was on his way to Oak Hall, and it was through him that Dave became acquainted with Phil Lawrence—reckoned by many the leader of the academy; Maurice Hamilton, generally called Shadow; Sam Day, Joseph Beggs,—who always went by the name of Buster, because he was so fat,—and a number of others. In Crumville Dave had had one boy friend, Ben Basswood, and Ben also came to Oak Hall, and so did Nat Poole, as flippant and loud-mouthed as ever.
But Dave soon found out that Nat Poole was not half so hard to get along with as was Gus Plum, the big bully of the Hall. There was a difference of opinion almost from the start, and Plum did all he could to annoy Dave and his friends. Plum wanted to be a leader in baseball and in athletics generally, and when he found himself outclassed, he was savagely bitter.
"I'll get square!" he told his toady, Chip Macklin, more than once; but his plans to injure Dave and his chums fell through, and, in the end, Macklin became disgusted with the bully and left him. Most of the boys wanted nothing to do with the boy who had been the bully's toady, but Dave put in a good word for him, and, in the end, Macklin was voted a pretty fair fellow, after all.
With the toady gone, Gus Plum and Nat Poole became very thick, and Poole lost no opportunity of telling how Dave had been raised at the poorhouse. Gus Plum took the matter up, and for a while poor Dave was made miserable by those who turned their backs on him. But Doctor Clay, who presided over the academy, sided with Dave, and so did all of the better class of students, and soon the affair blew over, at least for the time being. But now the bully was agitating it again, as we have just seen.
During the winter term at Oak Hall one thing of importance had occurred, of which some particulars must be given, for it has much to do with our present tale. Some of the boys, including Dave, had skated up the river to what was locally called the old castle—a deserted stone dwelling standing in a wilderness of trees. They had arrived at this structure just in time to view a quarrel between two men—one a sleek-looking fellow and the other an elderly man, dressed in the garb of a sailor. The sleek-looking individual was the man who had robbed Senator Morr's house, and just as he knocked the old sailor senseless to the ground, the boys rushed in and made him a prisoner.
When the old sailor came to his senses, he stared at Dave as if the boy were a ghost. He said his name was Billy Dill and that he had sailed the South Seas and many other portions of the briny deep. He insisted that he knew Dave well, and wanted to know why the youth had shaved off his mustache. The boys imagined that the tar was out of his head, and he was removed to a hospital. Later on, as Dave was so interested in the man, Mr. Wadsworth had him taken to a private sanitarium. Here he lingered for awhile between life and death, but at last grew better physically, although his mind was sadly unbalanced, and he could recall the past only in a hazy way.
Yet he insisted upon it, over and over again, that he had met Dave before, or, if not the youth, then somebody who looked exactly like him, although older. Pressed to tell his story, he said he had met this man on Cavasa Island, in the South Seas. He also mentioned a crazy nurse and a lost child, but could give no details, going off immediately into a wild flight about the roaring of the sea in his ears and the dancing of the lighthouse beacon in his eyes.
"He must know something of my past," Dave said, when he came away from visiting the old tar. "Oh, if only his mind were perfectly clear!"