with Gus Plum, the school bully,
and Chip Macklin, his toady. The cry of "poorhouse nobody" was again
raised, and Dave felt almost like leaving Oak Hall in disgust.

"I must find out who I really am," he told himself, and fortune
presently favored him. By a curious turn of circumstances he fell in
with an old sailor named Billy Dill. This tar declared he knew Dave or
somebody who looked exactly like him. This unknown individual was on an
island in the South Seas.

"My father's ships sail to the South Seas," Phil Lawrence told Dave, and
the upshot of the matter was that Dave took passage on one of the
vessels, in company with the ship-owner's son, Roger Morr, and Billy
Dill.

As already related in the second volume of this series, "Dave Porter in
the South Seas," the voyage of the _Stormy Petrel_ proved to be anything
but an uneventful one. Fearful storms arose, and Dave and some others
were cast away on an uninhabited island. But in the end all went well,
and, much to the lad's joy, he found an uncle named Dunston Porter.

"Your father is my twin brother," said Dunston Porter. "He is now
traveling in Europe, and with him is your sister Laura, about one year
younger than yourself. We must return to the United States at once and
let them know of this. They mourn you as dead."

There was a good deal of money in the Porter family, a fair share of
which would come to Dave when he became of age. The whole party returned
to California and then to the East, and word was at once sent to Europe,
to David Breslow Porter, as Dave's father was named. To the surprise of
all, no answer came back, and then it was learned that Mr. Porter and
his daughter Laura had started on some trip, leaving no address behind
them.

"This is too bad," said Dave. "I wanted so much to see them."

"We'll get word soon, never fear," replied his uncle, and then advised
Dave to finish out his term at Oak Hall, Mr. Porter in the meantime
remaining a guest of the Wadsworth family.

How Dave went back to Oak Hall, and what happened to him there has
already been related in detail in "Dave Porter's Return to School." His
enemies could no longer twit him with being a "poorhouse nobody," yet
they did all they could to dim his popularity and get him into trouble.

"He shan't cut a dash over me, even if he has money," said Nat Poole,
and to this Gus Plum, the bully, eagerly agreed. There was likewise
another pupil, Nick Jasniff, who also hated Dave, and on