job tending a lemonade stand at an ocean resort. He made all sorts of acquaintances, good and bad. The latter did not demoralize him, but they did harden him. He grew to be a cynical, unhappy boy.
In his wanderings Frank brought up at a town called Pleasantville. This was the home of Bart Stirling, the hero of another volume of this series, "Bart Stirling's Road to Success," and of Darry and Bob Haven, whose stirring careers my former readers have followed in the volume entitled, "Working Hard to Win."
Frank arrived at Pleasantville in the company of two men, who had devised a great fraud upon the meanest but richest man in the place, Colonel Harrington. In disgust of their swindling ways, Frank destroyed the papers they hoped to impose upon the colonel. In escaping from them he was severely crippled and laid up for several weeks.
Soon his money gave out. He was turned away from the village hotel for not paying his board.
He proved a boy of ready resources, however. Bob Haven formed his acquaintance in the midst of one of his original and daring schemes for raising money quickly.
Frank paid up his debts and hung around Pleas-
