Page:Dave Porter at Star Ranch.djvu/70

58 will take you to me. Please, please don't disappoint me. "Yours truly,"."

Andrew Dale was the first assistant teacher at Oak Hall, and an instructor who had made himself very dear to Dave and some of the other boys. He had sided with Dave when the latter was termed "a poorhouse nobody," and this had made teacher and pupil close friends.

"What's the matter with my friend?" asked Dave, as he and Tom Shocker hurried through several side streets of the city.

"I don't know exactly," was the reply. "Money matters, I think, and the gent is sick, too. He wanted it kept very quiet—said it might ruin his reputation if it got out."

"Well, I didn't say anything to anybody," answered Dave. "How much further have we to go?"

"Only a couple of blocks."

But the "couple of blocks" proved to be five, and they had to make another turn or two. Then they came to the side door of a building used as a lodging house and a pool and billiard parlor. This resort was run by a man named Bill Fargo, a sport who had once had dealings with Shocker in a prize-fighting enterprise.