[1] During the late 1860s con artist Major Burdie is placing newspaper ads selling a framed engraved portrait of George Washington for a dollar.

Customers receive a three-cent Washington postage stamp stuck in the middle of a piece of paper with a frame border.

A crook named Willie the Fox comes and tells him their friend Lefty died and wanted Burdie to raise his infant son, whose mother is also dead.

Major Burdie earns money doing what he considers honest work – selling a fake cure for drunkenness.

Burdie receives notice that his bank has failed, and he has lost all of his money, including the $2,500 he had planned to return to the Bhaers.

Plumfield will need to close at the end of the month unless a miracle takes place and they can find a way to obtain $5,000.

Their banker has offered to buy Buttercup for $300 and, since they have no other money, they agree to sell their prize-winning milk cow.

Jack tells the other students that he heard Aunt Jo say that the school must close because Dan’s father is a crook that stole money from the Bhaers.

Newspapers across the country carry a front-page story about Major Burdie being a crook, and Dan brutely beating a fellow student.

Charles Arnt, Stanley Blystone, Nora Cecil, Hal K. Dawson, Sarah Edwards, George D. Green, Jack Henderson, Howard C. Hickman, Lloyd Ingraham, George Irving, William Irving, Bud Jamison, Nella Walker, Clarence Wilson and Duke York appear uncredited.