-taking in
private--and to expel me solemnly from the school. I never saw my old
master again, for he died not many years afterwards; but I hear that his
second son William is still carrying on the business, which is larger
and more prosperous than of old. His eldest son turned Quaker and went
out to Penn's settlement, where he is reported to have been slain by the
savages.

This adventure shocked my dear mother, but it found great favour in the
eyes of my father, who laughed until the whole village resounded
with his stentorian merriment. It reminded him, he said, of a similar
stratagem executed at Market Drayton by that God-fearing soldier Colonel
Pride, whereby a captain and three troopers of Lunsford's own regiment
of horse had been drowned, and many others precipitated into a river, to
the great glory of the true Church and to the satisfaction of the
chosen people. Even of the Church folk many were secretly glad at the
misfortune which had overtaken the Vicar, for his pretensions and his
pride had made him hated throughout the district.

By this time I had grown into a sturdy, broad-shouldered lad, and every
month added to my strength and my stature. When I was sixteen I could
carry a bag of wheat or a cask of beer against any man in the village,
and I could throw the fifteen-pound putting-stone to a distance of
thirty-six feet, which was four feet further than could Ted Dawson, the
blacksmith. Once when my father was unable to carry a bale of skins out
of the yard, I whipped it up and bare it away upon my shoulders. The
old man would often look gravely at me from under his heavy thatched
eyebrows, and shake his grizzled head as he sat in his arm-chair puffing
his pipe. 'You grow too big for the nest, lad,' he would say. 'I doubt
some of these days you'll find your wings and away!' In my heart I
longed that the time would come, for I was weary of the quiet life of
the village, and was anxious to see the great world of which I had heard
and read so much. I could not look southward without my spirit stirring
within me as my eyes fell upon those dark waves, the white crests of
which are like a fluttering signal ever waving to an English youth and
beckoning him to some unknown but glorious goal.

Chapter III. Of Two Friends of my Youth

I fear, my children, that you will think that the prologue is over long
for the play; but the foundations must be laid before the building is
erected, and a statement of this