(Printed in the United States of America) All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian. FRANK MERRIWELL’S MARRIAGE. CHAPTER I. AT EAGLE HEIGHTS. “I would give ten thousand dollars to know Frank Merriwell’s secret,” declared Wallace Grafter, sitting in a comfortable “Old Hickory” chair on the veranda of the Eagle Heights clubhouse and watching the Albany boat, which was passing on its way up the Hudson. “It would be worth it, my dear boy,” yawned Philip Phipps, a youth from Poughkeepsie, as he snapped a half-smoked cigarette over the rail and drew out his handsome watch, at which he casually glanced. “But do you think he has a secret?” “Of course he has!” exclaimed the first speaker decidedly. “His record proves it. What time is it?” “Ten-twenty,” answered Phipps. “He’ll be here in forty minutes,” said Grafter. “I’m curious to see him.” Farley Fisher, straight, square-shouldered, military in his bearing, not over twenty-four years of age, standing at a corner of the veranda, smiled a bit scornfully. “It is amusing to me, gentlemen,” he observed, “to think that any fellow can keep up a fake as long as Merriwell has.” “Fake?” cried Phipps, excitement bringing a touch of falsetto into his voice. “Fake?” questioned Grafter, moving his chair to face Fisher more squarely. “What do you mean by that?” “Just what I said—no more, no less. I am satisfied that Merriwell is a faker.” Inside an open window of the reading room, which was close at hand, Hobart Manton had been glancing over the pages of a magazine. The words of those outside reached his ears. He dropped the magazine and leaned on the window ledge. “I agree with you, Fisher,” he said. “Merriwell is the biggest faker in this country, and in many ways the cleverest. You know I’m a Yale man. At college I heard so much of Merriwell and what he had done while there that I grew sick and disgusted. He was successful in fooling almost everybody, it seems.”