“He will find a trap set for him the next time he comes nosing around here,” declared Frank with a grim-set lip. “Mother, don’t worry your mind any further, I am determined to get steady work and earn more money. I wish, too, we could leave Greenville. If it was any use I would stay and fight Dorsett to the last ditch. It’s no use, and I know it. Let us get out of the sight and memory of the old life. I’m going to strike out new.” “But how, what at?” inquired Mrs. Ismond doubtfully. “I don’t know yet, I will before another sun rises, though,” asserted Frank, staunchly. “That is, if good hard thinking can suggest the right way to go about it.” Frank took up his cap and walked from the house. He paused to place a silver fifty cent piece on the kitchen dresser. He had earned it before breakfast, cutting a lawn and trimming hedges up at Judge Bascom’s place. Frank had been doing such odd jobs about town for the past four months. He was courteous, accommodating and energetic. Everybody he worked for liked him, and he never shirked an honest task. He made out fairly well as a general utility boy about the village. The worst of it was, however, that his good luck came in streaks. One very busy week Frank made over ten dollars. Then the next week all he could get to do was chopping wood at fifty cents a day. “There is something better in me than that,” Frank resolved. “I’ve got the problem to solve what it is, and I feel that it is up to me to figure it out right now.” 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.