The fact was, that Mr.Lowington happened to think, while his indignation prompted him to resort to the severest punishment for Shuffles, that he himself had been just such a boy as the plunderer of his cherished fruit.

At the age of fifteen he had been the pest of the town in which he resided.

His father was a very wealthy man, and resorted to many expedients to cure the boy of his vicious propensities.
Young Lowington had a taste for the sea, and his father finally procured a midshipman's warrant for him to enter the navy.

The strict discipline of a ship of war proved to be the "one thing needful" for the reformation of the wild youth; and he not only became a steady young man, but a hard student and an accomplished officer.

The navy made a man of him, as it has of hundreds of the sons of rich men, demoralized by idleness and the absence of a reasonable ambition.
When Mr.Lowington was thirty years old, his father died, leaving to each of his three children a quarter of a million; and he had resigned his position in the navy, in order to take care of his property, and to lead a more domestic life with his wife and daughter than the discipline of the service would permit.
He had taken up his residence in Brockway, the early home of his wife.
It was a large town on the sea shore, only a few miles from the metropolis of New England, thus combining all the advantages of a home in the city and in the country.