A GREAT STREAK OF LUCK “Anybody home?” “Sure, walk right in, Toby. My latch-string is always out to my chums. I see you managed to pick up Steve on the way across; but I wager you had really to pry him loose from that dandy new volume on travel he was telling me about, because he’s such a bookworm.” The two boys who hastened to accept this warm invitation, and enter Jack Winters’ snug... more...

CHAPTER ITHREE BOYS OF CHESTER “No use talking, Toby, there’s something on Jack’s mind of late, and it’s beginning to bother him a lot, I think!” “Well, Steve, you certainly give me the creeps, that’s what you do, with your mysterious hints of all sorts of trouble hanging over our heads, just as they say the famous sword of that old worthy, Damocles, used to hang by a single hair, ready... more...

PREFACE. This work has already appeared in Graham's Magazine, under the title of "Rose Budd." The change of name is solely the act of the author, and arises from a conviction that the appellation given in this publication is more appropriate than the one laid aside. The necessity of writing to a name, instead of getting it from the incidents of the book itself, has been the cause of this... more...

CHAPTER I. The Widow and her Child.   On the night of Friday, the 26th of November, 1703, and at the hour of eleven, the door of a miserable habitation, situated in an obscure quarter of the Borough of Southwark, known as the Old Mint, was opened; and a man, with a lantern in his hand, appeared at the threshold. This person, whose age might be about forty, was attired in a brown double-breasted frieze... more...

CHAPTER I FUN AT WASHINGTON HALL "Now then, are you all ready?" inquired a voice in a hoarse whisper. "Galloping grasshoppers! We're as ready as we ever will be, JackRanger!" replied one from a crowd of boys gathered on the campus ofWashington Hall that evening in June. "Nat Anderson, if you speak again, above a whisper," said JackRanger, the leader, sternly, "you will... more...

CHAPTER I JACK IN THE SADDLE "Your father is a little late to-night, isn't he Jack?" "Yes, Mrs. Watson, he should have been here a half-hour ago, and he would, too, if he had ridden Sunger instead of his own horse." "You think a lot of that pony of yours, don't you, Jack?" and a motherly-looking woman came to the doorway of a small cottage and peered up the mountain... more...

his thing really started before the time I had Willy Maloon under observation when he gunned the small runabout well past cruising speed in order to reach the little asteroid as soon as he could. At times like that he showed undue impatience. I was following at a discreet distance behind him, homing in on the rock, too. I had to find out what he was up to. Archie Crosby, the obliging scoundrel, had... more...

CHAPTER I THE JOKE THAT FAILED "I say, you fellows, look here! What do you think of this? It's our lunch!" "This" was a large basket, lined with a white cloth, at the bottom of which lay nine bread-pills. Nine boys looked down at them in rueful disgust, and then across the school-room to where a larger group stood chuckling mischievously, their hands and mouths filled with... more...

THE KNAVE OF CLUBS They picked up the young man called "Snow" Gregory from a Lambeth gutter, and he was dead before the policeman on point duty in Waterloo Road, who had heard the shots, came upon the scene. He had been shot in his tracks on a night of snow and storm and none saw the murder. When they got him to the mortuary and searched his clothes they found nothing except a little tin box of... more...

Chapter I A Chance for a Position "Where are you going, Jack?" "To the shops of John Fowler & Company." "To look for a job?" "Yes." "Then you are in luck, for I heard this morning that they want another striker in the lower shop at once." "Then I'll <i>strike</i> for the opening at once, and my name is not JackNorth if I don't land... more...