Well, to make a short story of a long one, we watched the house burn down to a mass of smouldering heated ashes, and then we started to drive back without speaking. On the return we met a number of men on foot and horseback, who had sighted the conflagration from the cross-roads and were coming down the lane, but it was too late to do anything, and in a few words we explained what had happened. That night we spent at the tavern, and the next day we returned to Marshwood, followed by many curious persons. We dug in the still warm ruins, and there, to show the heat of the fire, we discovered nothing of the strong-box but the hinges, melted out of shape, and two or three small bits of metal as large as bullets that had once been gold pieces. These were turned over to me as being my lawful possessions, and they made, with what the doctor had saved and the miniature and the paper, my sole inheritance. So now begins the time I must act for myself.
CHAPTER IV.
WHEREIN I FALL IN LOVE WITH THE SEA.
On the twelfth day of November, 1811, my new life began. But before I go on I should explain that on the outside of the paper which the lawyer had saved, and which I had deciphered on the day of the burning of Marshwood House (and which has staid in my mind, as I transcribed it also), an address had been found. In some way it had been overlooked upon the first reading. It was important, however, as it gave the address of my uncle, Monsieur Henri Amedee Lovalle de Brienne, as Miller's Falls, near Stonington, Connecticut.
The lawyer had written to this place a letter at some length, but we had waited in vain for a reply; letters often went astray in those days, and in some way, as I afterwards discovered, this one was most likely lost. In the mean time I had become a member of Mr. Edgerton's family. I was treated with kindness, but of course it was not expected of him to take charge of my maintenance, and the proposition for a change came from my own lips. In walking along the water-front one day I discovered that a little brig, the Minetta, was about to sail for Stonington, and I proposed to Mr. Edgerton to take passage in her and search out my relative, if he were living.
The lawyer, who I could see felt himself responsible in some way for the beginning of my misfortune, exacted a promise that should I fail in finding M. de Brienne, I would return to him, and I should have done so had affairs terminated otherwise than as they did.
The consultation in which this decision was arrived at took place on the evening of the tenth of the month; and it was two days later, as I have written, that my new life began. For bright and early that morning I was standing at the taffrail of the little brig that was being warped out into midstream.
Mr. Edgerton and his family, consisting of a maiden sister and a grown daughter (he had been a widower for some ten years), together with Mr. Thompson, the school-master, the major, the kind doctor, and some of my boy companions, were on the dock. And I must not forget that Aunt Sheba, Ann Martha, and Ol' Peter were there also, all three of them in tears.
The lawyer had promised to take care of Peter, and the doctor had taken Aunt Sheba and Ann Martha into his household. I am glad to say that I had not sold the old people, although I had a perfect right to do so, as they were my property, but had given them their freedom, and knew they were left in kind hands and keeping.