“Roy Leighton own the hotel! then he will be coming here, and I don’t want to see him till he is paid,” she said, in some dismay, and Uncle Phil replied: “He don’t often bother himself to come to Rocky Point. Never was here more than two or three times. His agent does the business for him, and that agent is _me_. He was here once, and I believe his mother was up the mountain at a kind of hotel where city folks sometimes stay and make b’lieve they like it. But this Charlie stayed in town at the tavern, and folks——” Here Uncle Phil stopped abruptly, and Edna, after waiting a moment for him to proceed, said: “Folks did not fancy Charlie. He was not popular. Is that what you want to say? If it is, don’t be afraid to say it. I have borne much harder things than that,” and there came a sad, sorry look upon her face. She was thinking of her lost faith in Charlie’s integrity, and Uncle Phil of the scandalous stories there had been about the fast young man of eighteen who had made love to the girls indiscriminately, from little Marcia Belknap, the farmer’s daughter, to Miss Ruth Gardner, whose father was the great man of Rocky Point, and whose influence would do more to help or harm Edna than that of any other person in town. But Uncle Phil could not tell Edna all this, so he merely replied, after a little: “No, he wan’t very popular, that’s a fact. Young men from the cities are different, you know, and Charles was sowing his wild oats about those days. He passed for rich, you see; called it _my hotel_, my tenants, and all that, when it was his brother’s.” A sound from Edna like a sob made Uncle Phil pause abruptly and mentally curse himself for having said so much. The truth was he had never quite forgiven Charlie for inveigling him into loaning fifty dollars with promises of payment as soon as he could get a draft from home. The draft never came, but Roy did, and settled his brother’s bills and took him away while Uncle Phil was absent, and as Charlie made no mention of his indebtedness in that direction, the debt remained uncancelled. Several times Uncle Phil had been on the point of writing to Roy about it, but had neglected to do so, thinking to wait until he came to Rocky Point again, when he would speak to him about it. But after the news of Charlie’s tragical death was received, he abandoned the idea altogether: