cupied the position in which we found him at the
opening of our story.

When a very small youth Dave had been found wandering along the
railroad tracks near Crumville. He could tell little about himself or
how he had come in that position; and kind people had taken him in and
later on had placed him in the local poorhouse. From that institution
he had been taken by an old college professor, named Caspar Potts, who
at that time had been farming for his health.

In Crumville, the main industry was the Wadsworth jewelry works, owned
by Mr. Oliver Wadsworth, who resided, with his wife and his daughter
Jessie, in the finest mansion of that district. One day the Wadsworth
automobile caught fire, and Jessie was in danger of being burned to
death, when Dave came to her rescue. This led Mr. Wadsworth to ask
about the boy and about Mr. Potts. And when it was learned that the
latter was one of the jewelry manufacturer's former college
professors, Mr. Wadsworth insisted upon it that Caspar Potts come and
live with him, and bring Dave along.

"That boy deserves a good education," had been Oliver Wadsworth's
comment, after several interviews with Dave, and as a consequence the
youth had been sent off to a first-class boarding-school, as related
in the first volume of this series, entitled "Dave Porter at Oak
Hall."

At the school Dave had made a host of friends, including Roger Morr,
the son of a United States senator, and Phil Lawrence, the son of a
rich shipowner.

Ben Basswood, the son of a Crumville real estate dealer and a lad who
had been friendly with Dave for several years, also went to Oak Hall,
and thus he and Dave became closer chums than ever.

The great thing that troubled Dave in those days was the question of
his parentage. Some of the mean boys in the school occasionally
referred to him as "that poorhouse nobody," and this brought on
several severe quarrels and even a fist fight or two.

"I'm not going to be a nobody," said the youth to himself; and when he
received certain information from an old sailor he eagerly went on a
quest after his father, as told of in "Dave Porter in the South Seas."
There he managed to locate his uncle, Dunston Porter, and learned much
concerning his father, David Breslow Porter, and also his sister
Laura.

Coming back from the South Seas, Dave returned to school, and then
took a trip to the Far North, whither his father had gone before him.
There he had many adventures, as alre