"Your father is my twin brother," said Dunston Porter. "He is now traveling in Europe, and with him is your sister Laura, about one year younger than yourself. We must return to the United States at once and let them know of this. They mourn you as dead."
There was a good deal of money in the Porter family, a fair share of which would come to Dave when he became of age. The whole party returned to California and then to the East, and word was at once sent to Europe, to David Breslow Porter, as Dave's father was named. To the surprise of all, no answer came back, and then it was learned that Mr. Porter and his daughter Laura had started on some trip, leaving no address behind them.
"This is too bad," said Dave. "I wanted so much to see them."
"We'll get word soon, never fear," replied his uncle, and then advised Dave to finish out his term at Oak Hall, Mr. Porter in the meantime remaining a guest of the Wadsworth family.
How Dave went back to Oak Hall, and what happened to him there has already been related in detail in "Dave Porter's Return to School." His enemies could no longer twit him with being a "poorhouse nobody," yet they did all they could to dim his popularity and get him into trouble.
"He shan't cut a dash over me, even if he has money," said Nat Poole, and to this Gus Plum, the bully, eagerly agreed. There was likewise another pupil, Nick Jasniff, who also hated Dave, and one day this fellow, who was exceedingly hot-tempered, attempted to strike Dave down with a heavy Indian club. It was a most foul attack and justly condemned by nearly all who saw it, and thoroughly scared over what he had attempted to do, Nick Jasniff ran away from school and could not be found.
There had been a number of robberies around Oakdale, where the academy was located, and one day when Dave and his chums were out ice-boating they had come on the track of two of the robbers. Then to his surprise Dave learned that Nick Jasniff was also implicated in the thefts. He knew that Jasniff and Gus Plum were very intimate, and wondered if the bully of the school could be one of the criminals also. At length, one snowy day, he saw Plum leave the Hall and followed the fellow. Plum made for the railroad, where there was a deep cut, and into this cut he fell, just as a train was approaching. At the peril of his life Dave scrambled to the bottom of the opening and drew the bully from the tracks just as the train rolled by.