the ear?--they shone like my own
diamonds--does your good lady want any--real and fine? Were it not for
what you tell me, I should say it was a prophet's child. Fool, indeed!
he can write already, or I'll forfeit the box which I carry on my back,
and for which I should be loth to take two hundred pounds!' He then
leaned forward to inspect the lines which I had traced. All of a sudden
he started back, and grew white as a sheet; then, taking off his hat, he
made some strange gestures to me, cringing, chattering, and showing his
teeth, and shortly departed, muttering something about 'holy letters,'
and talking to himself in a strange tongue. The words of the Jew were in
due course of time reported to my mother, who treasured them in her
heart, and from that moment began to entertain brighter hopes of her
youngest born than she had ever before ventured to foster.

CHAPTER TWO

BARRACKS AND LODGINGS--A CAMP--THE VIPER--A DELICATE CHILD--BLACKBERRY
TIME--_MEUM_ AND _TUUM_--HYTHE--THE GOLGOTHA--DANEMAN'S SKULL--SUPERHUMAN
STATURE--STIRRING TIMES--THE SEA-BORD

I have been a wanderer the greater part of my life; indeed I remember
only two periods, and these by no means lengthy, when I was, strictly
speaking, stationary. I was a soldier's son, and as the means of my
father were by no means sufficient to support two establishments, his
family invariably attended him wherever he went, so that from my infancy
I was accustomed to travelling and wandering, and looked upon a monthly
change of scene and residence as a matter of course. Sometimes we lived
in barracks, sometimes in lodgings, but generally in the former, always
eschewing the latter from motives of economy, save when the barracks were
inconvenient and uncomfortable; and they must have been highly so indeed,
to have discouraged us from entering them; for though we were gentry
(pray bear that in mind, gentle reader), gentry by birth, and
incontestably so by my father's bearing the commission of good old George
the Third, we were not _fine gentry_, but people who could put up with as
much as any genteel Scotch family who find it convenient to live on a
third floor in London, or on a sixth at Edinburgh or Glasgow. It was not
a little that could discourage us: we once lived within the canvas walls
of a camp, at a place called Pett, in Sussex; and I believe it was at
this place that occurred the first circumstance, or adventure, call it
which you will, that I c