Saint Andrew's, for vacation there is pretty slow;
so Father Regan has sent us off to the seashore for the summer?"

"The seashore? Where?"

"Some queer place called Killykinick," answered Dan, who was now able to
sit up and be sociable.

"Killykinick?" repeated his companion, in a startled tone. "Did you say
you were going to Killykinick?"

"Yes," answered Dan. "Freddy's uncle or cousin or somebody died a while
ago and left him a place there. Freddy has a lot of houses and money and
things all his own. It's lucky he has. He isn't the kind to rough it and
tough it for himself. Not that he hasn't plenty of grit," went on Freddy's
chum, hastily. "He's as plucky a little chap as I ever saw. But he's been
used to having life soft and easy. He is the 'big bug' sort. (I ain't.) So
I'm glad he has money enough to make things smooth at the start, though
his no-'count father did skip off and leave him when he was only five
years old."

"His father left him?" repeated Dan's companion. "Why?"

"Don't know," answered Dan. "Just naturally a 'quitter,' I guess. Lots of
menfolks are. Want a free foot and no bother. But to shake a nice little
chap like Freddy I call a dirty, mean trick, don't you?"

"There might be reasons," was the hesitating rejoinder.

"What reason?" asked Dan, gruffly. "There ain't any sort of reason why a
father shouldn't stick to his job. I hate a 'quitter,' anyhow," concluded
Dan, decisively.

"Wait until you are twenty years older before you say that, my boy!" was
the answer. "Perhaps then you will know what quitting costs and means. But
you're an old chum for that little boy. I saw him with you down below. How
is it that you're such friends?"

And then Dan, being of a communicative nature, and seeing no cause for
reserve, told his new acquaintance all about the scholarship that had
introduced him into spheres of birth and breeding to which he frankly
confessed he could make no claim.

"I'm not Freddy's sort, I know; but he took to me somehow,--I can't tell
why."

Yet as Dan went on with his simple, honest story, his listener, who,
world-wise and world-weary as he was, knew something of the boyish nature
that turns instinctively to what is strong and true and good, felt he
could tell why Freddy took to this rough diamond of a chum.

Dan, in his turn, learned that his new acquaintance was called John Wirt;
that he was off on a vacation trip, hunting and fishing wherever there was
promise of good