I felt that this was true. I loved my mother better than anything in the world. Her affection and kindness to me was boundless. She always welcomed me home with a smiling face, and I never received a blow from her hand in my life.

My mother was about six-and-thirty years of age. She must have been beautiful in youth, for she was still very pretty. Her countenance was mild and gentle, and she was scrupulously neat and clean. I was proud of my mother. I saw no woman in her rank that could be compared with her; and any insult offered to her I resented with my whole heart and strength. I was too young to ask of her an explanation of the frequency of the Squire's visits to our house; and why, when he came, I was generally despatched on some errand to the village; and had the real explanation been given, I should not have believed it.

Mr. Carlos had no family, but his nephew and niece came twice a-year to spend their holidays at the old hall. Master Walter, who was his heir, was a fine manly fellow, about my own age, and Miss Ella, who was two years younger, was a sweet, fair girl, as beautiful as she was amiable.

I had just completed my fourteenth year, and was tall and stout for my age. Whenever these young people were at the hall, I was dressed in my best clothes, and went up every day to wait upon them. If they went fishing, I carried their basket and rods, baited their hooks, and found out the best places for their sport,--and managed the light row boat if they wished to extend their rambles further down the river.

Often we left boat and tackle, and had a scamper through the groves and meadows. I found Miss Ella birds' nests and wild strawberries, and we used to laugh and chat over our adventures on terms of perfect equality; making a feast of our berries and telling fairy tales and ghost stories.

Not unfrequently we frightened ourselves with these wild legends, and ran back to the boat, and the bright river, and the gay sunshine, as if the evil spirits we had conjured up were actually before us, and preparing to chase us through the dark wood. And then, when we gained the boat, we would stop and pant, and laugh at our own fears.

Walter Carlos was a capital shot, and very fond of all kinds of field-sports. His skill with a gun made me very ambitious to excel as a sportsman. Mr. Carlos was very particular about his game. He kept several gamekeepers, and was very severe in punishing all poachers who dared to trespa.s.s on his guarded rights;--yet, when his nephew expressed a wish that I might accompany him in his favourite diversion, to my utter astonishment and delight, he took out a licence for me, and presented me with a handsome fowling-piece, which I received on my birthday from his own hand.

"This, Noah," he said, "you may consider in the way of business, as it is my intention to bring you up for a gamekeeper."

Oh, what a proud day that was to me! With what delight I handled my newly-acquired treasure! How earnestly I listened to Joe, the head gamekeeper's, directions about the proper use of it! How I bragged and boasted to my village a.s.sociates of the game that _I and Master Walter_ had bagged in those sacred preserves that they dared not enter, for fear of those mysterious objects of terror--man-traps and spring guns!

"The Guy! he thinks that no one can shoot but himself," sneered Bill Martin, as he turned to a train of blackguards who were lounging with him against the pales of the porter's lodge, as I, returned one evening to my mother's with my gun over my shoulder and a hare and a brace of pheasants in my hand. "I guess there be others who can shoot hares and pheasants, without the Squire's leave, as well as he. He fancies himself quite a gemman, with that fine gun over his shoulder, and the Squire's licence in his pocket."

These insulting remarks stirred up the evil pa.s.sions in my breast. My gun was unloaded, but I pointed it at my tormentor, and told him to be quiet, or I'd shoot him like a dog. "Shoot and be ---- to you!" says he, "it's a better death than the gallows, and that's what you'll come to."

This speech was followed by a roar of coa.r.s.e laughter from his companions.

"I shall live to see you hung first!" I cried, lowering the gun, while a sort of prophetic vision of the far-off future swam before my sight.

"The company you keep, and the bad language you use, are certain indications of the road on which you are travelling. I have too much self-respect, to a.s.sociate with a blackguard like you."

"Dirty pride and self-conceit, should be the words you ought to use,"

quoth the impudent fellow. "My comrades are poor, but they arn't base-born sneaks like you."

With one blow I levelled him to the ground. Just at that moment the Squire rode up and prevented further mischief. That Bill Martin was born to be my evil genius. I wished him dead a hundred times a day, and the thought familiarized my mind to the deed. He was the haunting fiend, ever at my side to tempt me to commit sin.

CHAPTER XV.

MY FIRST LOVE.

Mere boy as I was, my heart had been deeply moved by the beauty of Miss Ella Carlos, I often waited upon her all day without feeling the least fatigue; and at night my dreams were full of her. I don't think that she was wholly insensible to my devotion, but it seemed a matter of amus.e.m.e.nt and curiosity to her.

I remember, one day--Oh, how should I forget it, for it formed a strong link of evil in my unhappy destiny,--that I was sitting on the bank of the river, making a cross-bow for my pretty young lady out of a tough piece of ash, for she wanted to play at shooting at a mark, and she and Master Walter were sitting beside me watching the progress of my work, when the latter said--

"I wish I were two years older."

"Why do you wish that, Watty?" asked Ella.

"Because papa says I am to go into the army at sixteen, and I do so long to be a soldier."

"But you might be killed."

"And I might live to be a great man like the Duke of Wellington," said he with boyish enthusiasm. "So, Madame Ella, set the one chance against the other."

"But it requires more than mere courage, Walter, to make a great man like him. I have heard papa say--and he fought under him in Spain--that it takes a century to produce a Wellington."

"I think papa did the Duke great injustice," said Walter. "There is not one of the heroes of antiquity to compare to him. Julius Caesar was not a greater conqueror than Napoleon, and Wellington beat him. But great as the Duke is, Miss Ella, he was a boy once--a soldier of fortune, as I shall be; and who knows but that I may win as great a name?"

"It is a good thing, to have a fine conceit of one's self," said the provoking girl. "And what would you like to be, Noah?" she cried, with a playful smile, and turning her bright, blue eyes on me. "An Oliver Cromwell at least, as he was a man of the people; and you seem to have as good a headpiece as my valiant brother."

"I wish," I said with a sigh, which I could not repress, "that I were a gentleman."

"Perhaps you are as near obtaining your wish as Walter is. And why, Noah, do you wish to be a gentleman? You are much better off if you only knew it, as you are."

I shook my head.

"Come answer me, Noah, I want to know."

"Indeed, Miss Ella, I cannot."

"You can, and shall."

I looked earnestly into her beautiful face.

"Oh, Miss Ella, can you ask that?"

"Why not? Your reasons, Mr. Noah. Your reasons."

My eyes sought the ground. I felt the colour glow upon my cheeks, and I answered in a voice trembling with emotion,--"Because, if I were a gentleman, Miss Ella, I might then hope that you would love me; and that I might one day ask you for my wife."

The young thing sprang from the ground as if stung by a viper, her eyes flashing and her cheek crimson with pa.s.sion. "_You_ are an impertinent, vulgar fellow," she cried! "_You_ dare to think of marrying a lady!

_You_, who have not even fortune to atone for your plebeian name and low origin! Never presume to speak to me again!"

She swept from us in high dudgeon. Her brother laughed at what he termed a funny joke. I was silent and for ever. The subject was the most important to me in life. That flash of disdain from the proud bright eye--that haughty sarcastic curve of her beautiful young lip, had annihilated it. Yet, her words awoke a strange idea in my mind, that finally lured me onward to destruction. They led me to imagine, that the want of fortune was the only real obstacle between me and the attainment of my presumptuous hopes. That common as my name was, I only required the magic of gold to enn.o.ble it; and proud as she was, if I were but rich, even she would condescend to listen to me and become mine.

From that hour Miss Ella walked and talked with me no more. I saw her daily at the hall, but she never cast upon me a pa.s.sing glance, or if chance threw us in the same path, she always turned disdainfully away.

The distance which every hour widened between us, only served to increase the pa.s.sion that consumed me. I tried to feel indifferent to her scorn, in fact to hate her if I could, but my efforts in both cases proved abortive.

Shortly after this conversation, Mr. Walter joined the army, and Miss Ella accompanied her mother to France to finish her education; and I was placed under the head gamekeeper, to learn the art of detecting snares and catching poachers.

I filled the post a.s.signed me with such credit to myself, and so completely to the satisfaction of my master, that after a few years, on the death of old Joe Hunter, I was promoted to his place, with a salary of one hundred pounds per annum--and the use of this cottage and farm rent free.

I now fancied myself an independent man; and my old longing for being a gentleman returned with double force; and though I had not seen Miss Ella for years, my boyish attachment was by no means diminished by absence. I determined to devote all my spare time in acquiring a knowledge of books. Our curate was a poor and studious man; to him I made known my craving for mental improvement; and as my means were more than adequate to my simple wants, and I never indulged in low vices, I could afford to pay him well for instructing me in the arts and sciences.

If Mr. Abel found me a willing pupil, I found in him a kind, intellectual instructor. Would to G.o.d I had made him a confidant of the state of my mind, and given him the true motives which made me so eager to improve myself. But from boyhood I was silent and reserved, and preferred keeping my thoughts and opinions to myself. I never could share the product of my brain with another; and this unsociable secretiveness, though it invested me with an outward decency of deportment, fostered a mental hypocrisy and self deception, far more destructive to true G.o.dliness than the most reckless vivacity.

Mr. Abel entertained a high respect for me--I was the model young man of the parish; and where-ever he went, he spoke in terms of approbation of my talents, my integrity, my filial duty to my mother, and the laudable efforts I was making to raise myself in society. This was all very gratifying to my vanity. I firmly believed in the verity of my own goodness, and considered the good curate only did me justice.

Our conversation often turned on religious matters, but my orthodoxy was so correct, my outward conduct so unimpeachable, that my t.i.tle to piety of a superior cast made not the least item in the long catalogue of my virtues. And the heart all this time,--that veiled and guarded heart, whose motions none ever looked upon or suspected--was a blank moral desert; a spot in which every corrupt weed had ample s.p.a.ce to spread and grow without let or hindrance.