Beadle's Pocket Library No. 107

This installment of "Jack Hoyle's Lead: The Road to Fortune" by Edward L. Wheeler (author of the Deadwood Dick novels) follows an eighteen-year-old protagonist in Lowell during his sudden financial and social collapse. Jack learns his father died insolvent—the firm's partner Addison Tremaine holds a mortgage on family property and settles Jack's inheritance at sixteen cents. Rejected romantically by Miss Lillian Lorne, Jack leaves town resolved to build an honest fortune to redeem the mortgage within five years. He finds genuine kindness from Rector Bond and his daughter Bessie, before departing with vague ambitions and minimal funds. The narrative shifts toward a scheme involving cats, though the OCR becomes garbled at the chapter's end. The story explores themes of redemption, poverty versus wealth-based social standing, and a young man's determination to overcome a ruined inheritance.