It was the county seat, and, being the largest place in the county, country people for miles around traded at its stores.
A good-sized river skirted its northern boundary, and the traffic in that direction made Sackville quite a lively place, and consequently of some local importance.
Jack Howard was a lad of good family whose people lived in New York.
A close student, too intense application to his studies had undermined his general health, and the family physician recommended that he be sent out West to rough it awhile on the large farm of a distant relative in Nebraska.
This farm was about three miles outside of Sackville.
Jack had already lived and worked like an ordinary farmhand on his relative’s place for the best part of a year, and his new life had made an altogether different looking boy of him—so much so, indeed, that his parents and friends in the East could hardly recognize the photograph of himself which he had lately sent them.
He often came to Sackville; and, being a genial, whole-souled kind of a boy, had made himself popular with all with whom he came in contact.
This was particularly the case with Charlie Fox, who instantly took an uncommon fancy to him, and the consequence was that they became chums.
Charlie had just graduated at the Sackville high school.
He had taken up the study of medicine under his father a year or so before, as the old gentleman intended his son should be his successor, and Charlie rather liked the profession.