“We heard these things an’ lots more about him, better or worse, mostly worse. Wife and I wondered at ’em and was sorry. But whenever he come over here, no matter what he might be further inside, Mr. Winthrop was always a perfect gentleman, not a bit dissipated-lookin’, exceptin’ his bein’ generally very pale; and we rather liked his visits. He seemed pretty well tired out when he was here. He’d shut himself up in his room, or take a boat an’ go fishin’. Wife an’ I think he’s stuck so to the place as a kind of a refuge an’ restin’-place for him when things don’t suit him. He’s a nice-lookin’, pleasant-spoken man, of, I dare say, forty, only he don’t look his age. Well, after he’d been in Boston a while he broke loose again with a hull set of his worst chums. The papers said there was a forgery he and they was all mixed up in together. And when he come here, the same summer that Mr. Clagg knew about, then we found out that he’d got as many as a half dozen names and two or three post-office addresses.
“But there was worse to come. One afternoon, in September, he and some o’ the evilest-faced and best-dressed fellows I ever see come to the island from off a yacht. They all sat down there by the Point talkin’ and wranglin’ till sundown. Then Mr. Jennison went off with them in the boat, only comin’ up here a minute to say how-d’-do to Loreta here. Loreta was more afraid of him than glad to see him, for all the soft spot in her heart.”
“I wasn’t afraid of him, Obed, but I wasn’t glad to see him,” protested Mrs. Probasco. “I was sure that no man could keep that kind o’ company and seem on such good terms with ’em, and be any longer a credit to his stock.”
“A credit to his stock!” mocked Obed. “That’s your usual mild way o’ puttin’ it. She’ll take the man’s part, more or less, till she dies, boys, mark my words! Well, the very week after he and his party landed here, that afternoon, there came a big noise about a robbery of a bank in New York, that all the papers was full of; an’ the parties that managed it planned the hull affair in a yacht they’d hired, an’ they’d expected to get off safe in it when the thing was over. ’Twas a little before your day, Mr. Philip――the Suburban Bank robbery at a place close to New York――”
