The apothecary had two sons, one a year older, and the other some months younger that I was. The eldest was deformed, and his brother squinted abominably. Curiosity had brought them and the whole family into the parlour, to be spectators of the interview. My grandfather entered; I was dressed as genteelly as every effort of the village taylor could contrive; an appearance so different from that of the beaten, bruised, and wounded poor elf he first had seen, with clouted shoes, torn stockings, and coarse coating, dripping with water, and clotted with blood, was so great as scarcely to be credible. The ugliness of my companions did but enhance the superiority of my look; he could not be mistaken in which was his grandson, and the pleasure my pre-eminence inspired excited a smile of no little approbation. For my part I had conceived an affection for him; first I had saved his life, then he had relieved me from distress, and now was come to own me as his grandson. The change of my present situation from that in which I had endured so much misery gave me ineffable pleasure. The entrance of the rector, who had been the cause of this change, and the smile with which he regarded me went to my heart. I kneeled, my eyes flowing in tears, and begged his blessing. He gave it, bade me rise, and thus made me one of the happiest creatures existing.
The rector stayed some time to settle accounts with the apothecary, after which the postillion was called, leave was taken, and I found myself seated beside my grandfather, in that fortunate post chariot from which I had so happily extricated him.
How extreme are the vicissitudes of life! What a reverse of fortune was here! From hard fare, severe labour, and a brutal tyrant, to plenty, ease, and smiling felicity. No longer chained in poverty and ignorance, I now had free access to the precious mines of knowledge. Far from being restrained, I had every encouragement to pursue inquiry; and the happiness of the change was at first so great as almost to be incredible. But the youthful mind easily acquires new habits, and my character varied with the accidents by which it was influenced. Yet, to use my father's language, the case-hardening I had received tempered my future life, and prepared me to endure those misfortunes with fortitude which might otherwise have broken my spirit.
From the day that I arrived at the rectory, I increased so fast in my grandfather's favour that he scarcely knew how to deny me a request. I was soon bold enough to petition for my mother; and though the pill at first was bitter, my repeated importunities at length prevailed, and the rector agreed that, when his daughter should have sufficiently humbled herself, in terms suited to his dignity and her degradation, she should be permitted to kneel at his footstool for pardon, instead of perishing like an out-cast as she deserved.
It was not to be expected that my mother should object to the conditions; the alternative was very simple, submit or starve. Beside she had been too much accustomed to the display of the collective authority, accumulated in the person of the rector, to think of contest. His government was patriarchal, and his powers plenipotentiary. He was the head of his family, the priest of the parish, the justice of peace for the hundred, and the greatest man of miles around. He had no rival, except the before-mentioned Squire Mowbray, whom, if divines can hate, I certainly think he hated.
Of the claims of my late master over me, as his apprentice, I never heard more. Perhaps there was no indenture, for I do not recollect to have signed one; but if there were he certainly was too conscious of his guilt to dare to enforce his right, now that he found me acknowledged and protected by a man so powerful as my grandfather. It is possible indeed that he should never have heard what became of me; though I consider that as very improbable. While I was at Oxford, I was informed that he died raving, with a fever in the brain.
I have mentioned the encouragement I received to pursue inquiry: one of the first things the rector thought of was my education. Now that he had owned I was indeed his grandson, it was fitting that his grandson should be a gentleman. In the parish committed to his pastoral guidance was a grammar school, that had been endowed, not indeed by Squire Mowbray or his ancestors, but, by the family that in times of yore had held the same estate. The pious founder had vested the government not entirely in his own family, and its representatives, but in that family and the rector for the time being. This circumstance, and many others of a parochial nature, conduced to a kind of partition of power, well calculated to excite contempt in the wealthy Squire, who was likewise lord of the manor, and inflame jealousy in heaven's holy vice-gerent, whose very office on earth is to govern, and to detect, reprove, and rectify, the wanderings of us silly sheep.
To this school I was immediately sent; and here, among other competitors was the Squire's eldest son, Hector Mowbray. He was two years older than I, and in the high exercise of that power to which he was the redoubted heir. To insult the boys, seize their marbles, split their tops, cuff them if they muttered, kick them if they complained to the master, get them flogged if they kicked and cuffed in return, and tyrannize over them to the very stretch of his invention, were practices in which he daily made himself more and more expert. He was the young Squire, and that was a receipt in full for all demands.
I soon came to understand that he was the son of a great man! a very great man indeed! and that there was a prodigious difference between flesh and blood of a squire's propagating, and that of ordinary breed. But I heard it so often repeated, and saw it proved in such a variety of instances, that I too was the grandson of a great man, ay so great as openly to declare war against, or at least bid defiance to, the giant power of Magog Mowbray (it was an epithet of my grandfather's giving) I say, I was so fully convinced that I myself was the son of somebody (pshaw! I mean the grandson) that no sooner did young Hector begin to exercise his ingenuity upon me, than I found myself exceedingly disposed to rebel. I had been bred in a hardy school.
At my first admission into this seminary, I did not immediately and fully enter into the spirit and practice of the place; though I soon became tolerably active. At robbing orchards, tying up latches, lifting gates, breaking down hedges, and driving cattle astray, I was by no means so great a proficient as Hector; nor had I any great affection for swimming hedgehogs, hunting cats, or setting dogs at boys and beggars; but at climbing trees, running, leaping, swimming, and such like exercises, I was among the most alert.