The Fortune Hunter

Nat Duncan and Harry Kellogg are college mates. Nat is the scion of a supposed rich family, while Harry has nothing but the expenses of an education. While Harry is in his diggings hard at work to make good in his college course, we find Nat with riotous companions of both sexes, finding two automobiles insufficient to carry the large party he is entertaining, and resulting in his arrest for stealing a trolley car and telephoning to his pal to find bail for him. However, with sufficient pride not to suffer the odium of a plucking at exams, Nat manages to secure a degree, while Harry graduates with high honors, and begins a business career in the mercantile firm of Bartlett and Co. Nat's father dies when it is discovered that the estate is bankrupt. Harry secures for him a berth as commercial traveler with Bartlett and Co., and after a turn at expensive living, his career as a drummer is closed when he sends home an account, with expenses set at $361.20 and sales $97.50. He tries many means of livelihood, all unsuccessful. One night his old friend, Harry, rescues him from a park bench and takes him home to his own apartment. Nat, driven almost to desperation by his continued failures, is willing to grasp at any straw that will keep his head above water, and with the characteristic remark, "God help the future Mrs. Duncan," he signs a contract with Harry. This contract specifies, that he is to renounce forever, liquor and tobacco, that he must go regularly to church, that he must not swear or use slang, and that he must secure some position in the chosen village of Redville, which will afford the opportunity of meeting the heiress he is to win. The contract is religiously kept, and Nat soon causes real excitement in the town of Redville, but his abstemious habits his studious nights, and his close attention to his religious duties are noted. But the position he must secure so as to repay Harry the five hundred dollars loaned him for working capital does not materialize and he finally applies for employment to an old druggist and inventor named Samuel Graham. Graham, in his eagerness to create fame and fortune for himself out of his inventions, has left his drug business fall into decay, and his only daughter, Betty, has grown up as the household drudge. Naturally, the old man cannot afford to pay a clerk; Nat offers to work for nothing if Graham will teach him the business. This proposition is accepted and immediately Nat developed an adaptability he had nev