became warm friends. Roger was on his way to Oak Hall, and it was through him that Dave became acquainted with Phil Lawrence—reckoned by many the leader of the academy; Maurice Hamilton, generally called Shadow; Sam Day, Joseph Beggs,—who always went by the name of Buster, because he was so fat,—and a number of others. In Crumville Dave had had one boy friend, Ben Basswood, and Ben also came to Oak Hall, and so did Nat Poole, as flippant and loud-mouthed as ever.
But Dave soon found out that Nat Poole was not half so hard to get along with as was Gus Plum, the big bully of the Hall. There was a difference of opinion almost from the start, and Plum did all he could to annoy Dave and his friends. Plum wanted to be a leader in baseball and in athletics generally, and when he found himself outclassed, he was savagely bitter.
"I'll get square!" he told his toady, Chip Macklin, more than once; but his plans to injure Dave and his chums fell through, and, in the end, Macklin became disgusted with the bully and left him. Most of the boys wanted nothing to do with the boy who had been the bully's toady, but Dave put in a good word for him, and, in the end, Macklin was voted a pretty fair fellow, after all.
With the toady gone, Gus Plum and Nat Poole became very thick, and Poole lost no opportunity of telling how Dave had been raised at the poor-
