Walter Conrad, then, not quite a year since, had received, when at boarding school, the unexpected intelligence of his father’s serious illness. On reaching home, he found his parent dead. Subsequently he learned that his father had bought shares to the extent of a hundred thousand dollars in the Great Metropolitan Mining Company, and through the failure of this company had probably lost everything. This intelligence had doubtless hastened his death. Walter was, of course, obliged to leave school, and accepted temporarily an invitation from Mr. Jacob Drummond, of Stapleton, a remote kinsman, to visit him. In extending the invitation Mr. Drummond was under the illusion that Walter was the heir to a large property. On learning the truth, his manner was changed completely, and Walter, finding himself no longer welcome as a guest, proposed to enter Mr. Drummond’s store as a clerk. Being a strong and capable boy, he was readily received on board wages. The board, however, proved to be very poor, and his position was made more disagreeable by Joshua Drummond, three years older than himself, who, finding he could get nothing out of him, took a dislike to him. Walter finally left Mr. Drummond’s employ, and, led by his love of adventure, accepted an offer to travel as a book agent in Ohio. Here he was successful, though he met with one serious adventure, involving him in some danger, but was finally led to abandon the business at the request of Clement Shaw, his father’s executor, for the following reason: The head of the Great Metropolitan Mining Company, through whom his father had been led to invest his entire fortune in it, was a man named James Wall, a specious and plausible man, through whose mismanagement it was believed it had failed. He was strongly suspected of conspiring to make a fortune out of it at the expense of the other stockholders. He had written to Mr. Shaw, offering the sum of two thousand dollars for the thousand shares now held by Walter, an offer which the executor did not feel inclined to accept until he knew that it was made in good faith. He, therefore, wrote to Walter to change his name and go on to Portville, the home of Mr. Wall, and there use all his shrewdness to discover what he could of the position of the mining company, and Mr. Wall’s designs in relation thereto. It may be added that after selling the balance of the estate, Walter was found entitled to five hundred dollars. He had, besides, cleared eighty-seven dollars net profit on his sales as book agent. Such is Walter’s story, though, for the present, we shall have to call our hero Gilbert Howard--an assumed name, which he had adopted at the executor’s suggestion, lest his real name might excite the suspicions of Mr. Wall and so defeat the purpose of his journey. Walter had scarcely made his preparations to leave the cars, when the whistle sounded, and the train, gradually slackening its speed, came to a stop.