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 good-naturedly, with a wink at Philip, and in some enjoyment of the situation; "but wait. Before I do I'm going to tell the boys here what you know already. Then they'll understand the rest of my story better. You see, Mr. Touchtone," he began, "Mr. Winthrop Jennison grew up without father or mother, an' he was first sent to one boarding-school, then to another, by his uncle, for whom he was named—who owned this place till he died. Mr. Winthrop was a wild kind of a boy, from the first. I guess he wasn't so downright bad, but he was wild, an' easy led into bad scrapes. There was two or three we heard of, before his eddication an' his law studies was done. Then his uncle, that was his guardian, died; an' Mr. Winthrop was sent to Europe. He'd used to come here quite often in the summers before that. Wife an' I thought a good deal o' him, an' wanted to keep up his interest in the place. But in France and Germany he altered a good deal, an' spent most of his money, an' when he got back to New York he hadn't much. He couldn't well sell this place, or he wouldn't, so he always said. At any rate, that wouldn't have been o' much use. At last,