loudly dressed, and with a shock of uncombed hair and a cap set over on one ear.
"Hello, Plum," said Dave, pleasantly, while his two companions nodded to the newcomer.
"Hello, yourself," came shortly from Gus Plum. "Hold up a minute," he went on, planting himself in front of the three.
"What's wanted?" questioned Phil, in a little surprise.
"I want to know if Shadow Hamilton has been saying anything about me to you," growled the bully of Oak Hall.
"I haven't heard anything," answered Phil, while Dave and Roger shook their heads.
"Humph! He had better not!" muttered Plum, with a scowl. "If he does – " The bully did not finish.
"I hope there is no more trouble in the air," was Dave's comment.
"There will be trouble, if Hamilton opens his trap. I won't allow anybody in this school to talk about me, and all of you had better understand it," and the bully glared at the others defiantly.
"I am sure I don't know what you are talking about," said Dave. "I haven't said anything about you."
"And you haven't heard anything?" inquired Gus Plum, with a look of keen anxiety showing on his coarse face.
"I've heard some roundabout story about your father losing money," said Roger, before Dave could answer. "If it is true, I am sorry for you, Gus."
"Bah! I don't want your sympathy. Did Hamilton tell you that story?"
"No."
"I suppose you are spreading it right and left, eh? Making me out to be a pauper, like your friend Porter, eh?" continued Gus Plum, working himself up into a magnificent condition of ill-humor.
"I am not spreading it right and left," answered Roger, quietly.
"And I am not a pauper, Plum!" exclaimed Dave, with flashing eyes. "I thought we had settled that difference of opinion long ago. If you are going to open it up again – "
"Oh, don't mind what he says, Dave," broke in Phil, catching his chum by the arm. "You know nobody in the school pays attention to him."
"I won't let any of you run me down!" roared Gus Plum. "Now, just you remember that! If any of you say a word about me or my father, I'll make it so hot for you that you'll wish you had never been born. My father has lost a little money, but it ain't a flea-bite to what he is worth, and I want everybody in this school to know it."
"And I want you to know that you cannot continue to insult me," blazed out Dave. "I am not as rich as most of the boys here, but – "
"He is just as good as any of us, Plum, remember that," finished Phil. "It is an outrage for you to refer to Dave as a pauper."
"Well, didn't he come from the poorhouse, and ain't he a nobody?" sneered the bully.
"He is a better fellow than you will ever be, Plum," said Roger, warmly. He and Phil were both holding Dave back. "Don't listen to him, Dave."
"Yes, but, fellows – " Dave's face was white, and he trembled all over.
"I know it cuts you," whispered Roger. "But Plum is a – a brute. Don't waste your breath on him."
"Ho! so I am a brute, am I?" blustered the big bully, clenching his fists.
"Yes, you are," answered Roger, boldly. "Any fellow with a spark of goodness and honor in him would not speak to Dave as you have done. It simply shows up your own low-mindedness, Plum."
"Don't you preach!" shouted the bully. "Say another word, and I'll – I'll – "
"We are not afraid of you," said Phil, firmly. "We've told you that before. We intend to leave you alone, and the best thing you can do is to leave us alone."
"Bah! I know you, and you can't fool me! You say one thing to my face and another behind my back. But don't you dare to say too much; and you can tell Shadow Hamilton not to say too much, either. If you do – well, there will be war, that's all – and all of you will get what you don't want!" And with this threat, Gus Plum hurried around a corner of the school building and out of sight.
"What a cad!" murmured Phil.
"He is worked up; no disputing that," was Roger's comment. "He acts as if he was afraid something was being told that he wished to keep a secret."
The hot blood had rushed to Dave's face, and he was still trembling.
"I wish I had knocked him down," he said in a low tone.
"What good would it have done?" returned Roger. "It would only get you into trouble with the doctor, and that is just what Plum would like. When it comes to a standing in the class, he knows he hasn't as much to lose as you have. He is almost at the bottom already, while you are close to the top."
"But, Roger, he said – oh, I can't bear to think about it! I suppose he blabs it to everybody, too, and they will think – "
"Don't give it another thought, Dave," said Phil, soothingly, and he turned his chum toward the river again. "Dismiss Plum and all his meanness from your mind."
"I wish I could," answered Dave, and his voice had a great deal of seriousness in it.
CHAPTER II
A GLIMPSE OF THE PAST
As the three boys hurried to the river, Dave Porter felt that all his anticipated sport for that afternoon had been spoiled. He had been brought face to face once more with the one dark spot in his history, and his heart was filled with a bitterness which his two loyal chums could scarcely comprehend.
Dave was indeed a poorhouse boy, and of unknown parentage. When but a few years of age, he had been found one evening in the summer wandering close to the railroad tracks just outside of the village of Crumville. How he was found by some farm hands and taken to a house and fed and cared for otherwise, has already been related in the first volume of this series, entitled "Dave Porter at Oak Hall."
At first, every effort to learn his identity was made, but, this failing, he was turned over to the poorhouse authorities. He said his name was Dave, or Davy, and sometimes added Porter, and then Dun-Dun, and from this he was called Dave Porter – a name which suited him very well.
Dave remained at the poorhouse until he was about nine years old, when he was taken out of that institution by a broken-down college professor named Caspar Potts, who had turned farmer. He remained with the old professor for several years, and a warm friendship sprang up between the pair. Caspar Potts gave Dave a fair education, and, in return, the boy did all he could for the old man, who was not in the best of health, and rather eccentric at times.
Unfortunately for Professor Potts, there was in the neighborhood a hard-hearted money-lender named Aaron Poole, who had a mortgage on the old educator's farm. The money-lender had a son named Nat, who was a flippant youth, and this boy had trouble with Dave. Then the money-lender would have sold out the old professor, had not aid come opportunely from a most unexpected quarter.
In this volume it is unnecessary to go into the details of how Dave became acquainted with Mr. Oliver Wadsworth, a rich manufacturer of the neighborhood, and how the boy saved Jessie Wadsworth from being burned to death when the gasoline tank of an automobile exploded and enveloped the young miss in flames. For
