“Perhaps the professor will hold him in. But it’s great news, isn’t it?” And in his enthusiasm Frank began to dance an impromptu jig on the library floor.
Frank Newton was a New York city youth, sixteen years of age, tall, well-built and rather good looking. He was the only son of a Wall Street banker, and if his parent was not a millionaire he was exceedingly well to do. The lad resided in the fashionable part of Madison Avenue when at home, which was not often, for his family were fond of going abroad, and either took the boy with them or sent him to boarding school.
Directly opposite the home of the Newtons lived the Robertson family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Robertson, Mark, and several smaller children. Mr. Robertson was a dry goods importer who owned an interest in several mills in England and Scotland, and he made trips across the Atlantic semi-yearly.
Although Mark Robertson was a year older than Frank Newton, the two lads were warm friends and had gone to school together for years. Their earlier education had been had in the city, but when Frank was eleven and Mark twelve both had been packed off to Lakeview Academy, a small but well conducted school nestling among the hills of New Hampshire.
Five years of life at the academy had made the place seem like a second home to the boys. The master, Professor Amos Strong, was a thorough gentleman and scholar, and under his guidance the boys progressed rapidly in all their studies. The professor had in his day been both a traveler and hunter, and the stories he was wont to relate during off hours were fascinating to the last degree.
As might be expected, the boys, while at school, made many friends and also an enemy or two, although as regards the latter, the enmity was never very deep, for Professor Strong would not tolerate anything underhanded or sneakish.
Next to Mark, Frank’s dearest chum at the academy was Dartworth Crane, a slightly built boy of fifteen, who was as full of fun as a boy can well be. Dartworth, or “Darry” as he was always called for short, was the son of a rich Chicago cattle dealer, and the boy’s earlier days had been spent on a ranch in Montana. He loved to race on horseback and hunt and fish, and the master sometimes had all he could do to hold the sunny but impetuous lad within proper bounds.
As Frank had another chum, so did Mark, in the person of Samuel Winthrop, the son of a well-to-do widow who resided in the Back Bay district of Boston. Samuel was a tall, studious looking individual, with a high forehead and a thick mass of curly black hair. Because he came from Boston, he had been nick-named “Beans,” and although he did not relish the sobriquet it was likely to stick to him for years to come.
Among the lads to join those at the academy two years before had been Jacob Hockley, a thin, lank youth of Mark’s age, with a white freckled face and hair strongly inclined to be red. Hockley was the only son and heir of a millionaire lumber dealer of Pennsylvania. His manner was peculiar, at times exceedingly “bossy” as the others declared, and then again morose and sour, the latter mood having won for him the nickname of “Glummy” or “Jake the Glum.” Hockley was given to spending his money, of which he had more than was good for him, freely, but even this had failed to make him any substantial friends.
The enmity between Hockley on one side, and Frank and Mark on the other, had arisen over the captaincy of the academy baseball team the summer previous. Jake wished to be the captain of the team, and had done his best to persuade or buy the boys over to vote for him. But Frank had advocated Mark for the captaincy, and Mark had won, much to the lank youth’s discomfiture.