Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 560

This issue of *Beadle and Adams'* dime novel series (Vol. XXIII, No. 560, April 17, 1888) features "The Gold Queen's Secret: A Romantic Story of Real Border Life" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, author of various frontier tales. The serial follows sixteen-year-old Gordon Lillie, an Illinois youth traveling west seeking fortune, who rescues fourteen-year-old Ruby Rolston from two highwaymen on a desolate highway. One pursuer—the discharged farmhand Luke Dorlan, nicknamed "Black Ben"—is killed in the ensuing gunfight; the other escapes. Andrew Rolston Jr., Ruby's brother, arrives to assist. The family, grateful for Gordon's heroism, offers him employment as a clerk at their banking house. Gordon accepts, later advancing to night watchman at the bank. The narrative establishes a romantic framework involving the young protagonists and suggests complications ahead involving the escaped highwayman Black Ben.