messenger boy. He drove a delivery wagon for a grocer, ushered at
a theater, was even a copyholder in the proofroom of a newspaper.
Hard work kept him thin, but he was like a lath for toughness.

Seven weeks after he was graduated from the high school his mother
died. The day of the funeral a real estate dealer called to offer
three, hundred dollars for the lots in the river bottom bought
some years earlier by Mrs. Farnum.

Jeff put the man off. It was too late now to do his mother any
good. She had had to struggle to the last for the bread she ate.
He wondered why the good things in life were so unevenly
distributed.

Twice during the next week Jeff was approached with offers for his
lots. The boy was no fool.

He found out that the land was wanted by a new railroad pushing
into Verden. Within three days he had sold direct to the agent of
the company for nine hundred dollars. With what he could earn on
the side and in his summers he thought that sum would take him
through college.



CHAPTER 2

I wonder if Morgan, the Pirate,
When plunder had glutted his heart,
Gave part of the junk from the ships he had sunk