himself, and we heard him say, "Everything of every sort
therein contained."

I suppose the lawyer was right, and that the fat man was convinced of
it, for neither he nor any one else disputed the old miser's will. Jem
and I each opened an account in the Savings Bank, and Mrs. Wood came
into possession of the place.

Public opinion went up and down a good deal about the old miser still. When
it leaked out that he had worded the invitation to his funeral to the
effect that, being quite unable to tolerate the follies of his
fellow-creatures, and the antics and absurdities which were necessary to
entertain them, he had much pleasure in welcoming his neighbours to a
feast, at which he could not reasonably be expected to preside--everybody
who heard it agreed that he must have been mad.

But it was a long sentence to remember, and not a very easy one to
understand, and those who saw the plumes and the procession, and those
who had a talk with the undertaker, and those who got a yard more than
usual of such very good black silk, and those who were able to remember
what they had had for dinner, were all charitably inclined to believe
that the old man's heart had not been far from being in the right
place, at whatever angle his head had been set on.

And then by degrees curiosity moved to Mrs. Wood. Who was she? What was
she like? What was she to the miser? Would she live at the farm?

To some of these questions the carrier, who was the first to see her,
replied. She was "a quiet, genteel-looking sort of a grey-haired widow
lady, who looked as if she'd seen a deal of trouble, and was badly off."

The neighbourhood was not unkindly, and many folk were ready to be civil
to the widow if she came to live there.

"But she never will," everybody said. "She must let it. Perhaps the new
doctor might think of it at a low rent, he'd be glad of the field for
his horse. What could she do with an old place like that, and not a
penny to keep it up with?"

What she did do was to have a school there, and that was how Walnut-tree
Farm became Walnut-tree Academy.

CHAPTER III.

"What are little boys made of, made of?
What are little boys made of?"
_Nursery Rhyme_.

When the school was opened, Jem and I were sent there at once. Everybody
said it was "time we were sent somewhere," and that "we were getting too
wild for home."

I got so tired of hearing this at last, that one day I wa