I was a strong, active, healthy boy, quite able to take my own part, and defend my own rights, against any lad of my own age who dared to ask impertinent questions.
The great man of the village—Squire Carlos, as he was called—lived in a grand hall, surrounded by a stately park, about a mile from F——, on the main road leading to London. His plantations and game preserves extended for many miles along the public thoroughfare, and my mother kept the first porter's-lodge nearest the village.
The Squire had been married, but his wife had been dead for some years. He was a tall, handsome man in middle life, and bore the character of having been a very gay man in his youth. It was whispered among the aforesaid village gossips, that these indiscretions had shortened the days of his lady, who loved him passionately; at any rate, she died in consumption before she had completed her twenty-fourth year, without leaving an heir to the estate, and the Squire never married again.
Mr. Carlos often came to the lodge,—so often, that he seldom passed through the gate on his way to and from the Hall without stepping in to chat with my mother. This was when he was alone; accompanied by strangers he took no notice of us at all. My mother generally sent me to open the gate. The gentlemen used to call me a pretty curly-headed boy, and I got a great deal of small change from them on hunting-days. I remember one afternoon, when opening the gate for a large party of gentlemen, with the Squire at their head, that one of them tapped my cheek with his riding whip, and exclaimed—
"By Jove! Carlos, that's a handsome boy."
"Oh, yes," said another; "the very picture of his father."
And the Squire laughed, and they all laughed; and when I went back into the lodge I showed my mother a handful of silver I had been given, and said—
"Mother, who was my father?"
"Mr. Cotton, of course," she answered gravely. "But why, Noah, do you ask?"
"Because I want to know something about him."