Darke Darrell, the Boy Detective

This issue features "Darke Darrell, The Boy Detective" by Frank H. Stauffer. The serial opens in Baltimore, where the sixteen-year-old protagonist—small for his age but quick-witted—returns home to his bedridden mother empty-handed, unable to obtain medicine on credit from the druggist. Desperate with hunger and poverty, Darke is tempted toward petty theft, but his mother extracts a solemn promise that he will never steal. After she counsels him on virtue and patience, a neighbor named Michael Mullen, a one-legged railroad flagman, arrives with troubling news: Darke's father has abandoned the family for California without support. Though his mother bears the blow with resignation, young Darke vows to become a man and provide for her, though struggling to master his fierce temper.