A STORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.
BY JAMES BARNES.
CHAPTER II.
A DEFERRED SOLUTION.
It was very early the next morning when we started northward along the turnpike. The doctor and I were driving in a tall chaise that swayed on its hinges like a small-boat in a tide-rip.
Mr. Edgerton followed on horseback. The sun had not risen when I had been awakened, and the morning chill was in the air; a mist hung low over the marshes, and the waters of the bay looked dull and cold. I had begun to shiver, and the kind physician threw a heavy cape around me, and tucked me in carefully beside him.
We had not spoken, except for a morning's greeting, but now he began a fire of questions, and I could not answer even the simplest. I had never heard that my mother was a widow before her marriage to the man whose name I bore; I did not know her maiden name, nor where she came from; and if I was not born at the plantation on the Gunpowder, my birthplace was a mystery to me; for, as I have said, my first recollection was the warm day on the beach.
My mother had told me nothing from which I could formulate a suggestion or give a reply that would throw any light upon my family history. What was to become of me I did not know. Apparently my mother had left no will, and my appearance upon the day of her conversation with Mr. Edgerton had interrupted, probably, any disclosures which she had intended making.
The lawyer had ridden alongside of the chaise as we slowly ascended a slight hill.
"Know you anything, Master Hurdiss, of a large iron-bound chest in a room on the second story of Marshwood House?" (I have forgotten to say that the estate upon which we lived was known in the neighborhood as the "Marshwood plantation," whether from the name of a previous owner or its location, I have never been able to ascertain.)