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INTRODUCING THE ROVER BOYS.
11

knew not what to do. "Take all of the money I made in the West, but give me back my wife!" he said heartbrokenly; but this could not be, and soon after he left his three boys in charge of a housekeeper and set off to tour Europe, thinking that a change of scene would prove a benefit.

When he came back he seemed a changed man. He was restless, and could not remain at home for more than a few weeks at a time. He placed the boys at a boarding school in New York and returned to the West, where he made another strike in the gold mines; and when he came back once more he was reported to be worth between two and three hundred thousand dollars.

But now a new idea had come into his head. He had been reading up on Africa, and had reached the conclusion that there must be gold in the great unexplored regions of that country. He determined to go to Africa, fit out an expedition, and try his luck.

"It will not cost me over ten to twenty thousand dollars," he said to his brother Randolph. "And it may make me a millionaire."

"If you are bound to go, I will not stop you," had been Randolph Rover's reply. "But what of your boys in the meanwhile?"

This was a serious question, for Anderson