Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1087

This March 1890 issue of *Dime Library* (published by Beadle & Adams) features "Flip Fred, the Pack-Peddler Prince; or, The Witch of the Black Swamp" by Edward Lytton. The serial opens in rural Virginia with Flip Fred, a seventeen-year-old Anglo-Saxon pack-peddler, trudging through a valley in August heat. Resting on a bridge, he discovers Sally "Freckles" Shakes, a barefoot, freckled sixteen-year-old girl who has removed planks from the bridge to revenge herself on Madeline Magerald, the snobbish second wife of a major living in a nearby mansion. Madeline had struck Freckles with a whip from her phaeton. When Boyd de Bynville, a portly gentleman accompanying Madeline, arrives in their milk-white-horse phaeton, he encounters the damaged bridge. Flip Fred warns him off, and de Bynville angrily demands explanations, threatening to pursue the matter. The narrative exhibits period romantic and adventure conventions typical of dime novels.