Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 651

This installment of William G. Patten's serial "Bound Boy Frank" follows the title character, a sixteen-year-old farm laborer indentured to the tyrannical Farmer Joel Hobbs since childhood. Frank discovers a mysterious letter hidden in a hollow tree warning that "the devil is loose" and has "escaped from his guards." While searching for a stray cow, he secretly observes two men—Hobbs and wealthy Owen Durand—arguing in the barn. Durand demands money from the farmer, threatening to reveal that Hobbs committed a crime for which another man suffered legal consequences. Frank resolves to uncover the truth behind their sinister arrangement and the cryptic letter. The story establishes Frank's detective ambitions alongside the larger mystery of his parentage, hinted at through the account of his mother's death at the poorhouse years earlier.