CHAPTER XIV.

THE MURDERER'S MANUSCRIPT.

Who am I, that I should write a book?--a nameless, miserable and guilty man. It is because these facts stare me in the face, and the recollection of my past deeds goads me to madness, that I would fain unburthen my conscience by writing this record of myself.

I do not know what parish in England had the discredit of being my native place. I can just remember, in the far-off days of my early childhood, coming with my mother to live at F----, a pretty rural village in the fine agricultural county of S----. My mother was called Mrs. Cotton, and was reputed to be a widow, and I was her only child. Whether she had ever been married, the gossips of the place considered very doubtful. At that period of my life this important fact was a matter to me of perfect indifference.

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."

But my mother did not choose to answer impertinent questions; and, though greatly addicted to telling long stories, she seemed to know very little about the private memoirs of Mr. Cotton. She informed me, however, that he had been a fellow-servant with her in the Squire's employ; that he quarrelled with her shortly after I was born, and left her, and she did not know what had become of him, but she believed he went to America, and from his long silence, she concluded that he had been dead for some years. That out of respect for his services, Mr. Carlos had placed her in her present comfortable situation, and that I must show my gratitude to Mr. Carlos for all he had done for us, by the most dutiful and obliging behaviour. I likewise learned from her, that I was called Noah after my father.

This brief sketch of our family history was perfectly satisfactory to me at that time. I remember feeling a strong interest in my unknown progenitor, and used to build castles and speculate about his fate.

In the meanwhile, I found it good policy strictly to obey my mother's injunctions, and the alacrity which I displayed in waiting upon the Squire and his guests, never failed to secure a harvest of small coin, which gave me no small importance in the eyes of the lads in the village, who waited upon me with the same diligence that I did upon the Squire, in order no doubt to come in for a share of the spoil. Thus a love of acquiring without labour, and of obtaining admirers without any merit of my own, was early fostered in my heart, which led to a taste for fine dress and a boastful display of superiority, by no means consistent with my low birth and humble means.

In due time I was placed by Mr. Carlos at the village school, and the wish to be thought the first scholar in the school, and excel all my companions, stimulated me to learn with a diligence and determination of purpose, which soon placed me at the top of my class.

There was only one boy in the school who dared to dispute my supremacy, and he had by nature what I acquired with great toil and difficulty, a most retentive memory, which enabled him to repeat after once reading, a task which took me several days of hard study to learn. How I envied him this faculty, which I justly considered possessed no real merit in itself, but was a natural gift! It was not learning with him, it was mere reading. He would just throw a glance over the book, after idling half his time in play; and then walk up to the master, and say it off without making a single blunder. He was the most careless, reckless boy in the school, and certainly the cleverest. I hated him. I could not bear that he should equal, and even surpass me, when he took no pains to learn.

If the master had done him common justice, I should never have stood above him. But for some reason, best known to himself, he always favoured me, and snubbed Bill Martin, who in return played him a thousand impish tricks, and taught the other boys to rebel against his authority. Bill called me the _obsneakious_ young gentleman, and Mr. Bullen, the master, the Squire's Toady.

There was constant war between this lad and me. We were pretty equally matched in strength; for the victor of to-day, was sure to be beaten on the morrow. The boys generally took part with Martin. Such characters are always popular, and he had many admirers in the school. My aversion to this boy made me restless and unhappy. I really longed to do him some injury. Once, after I had given him a sound drubbing, he called me "a base-born puppy! a beggar, eating the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table."

Foaming with rage, for a wound to my pride was far worse in my estimation, than any personal injury, I demanded what he meant by such insulting language, and he sneered in my face, and told me to go home and ask my _virtuous_ mother, as she doubtless was better qualified to give me the information I desired. And I did ask my mother, and she told me "I was a foolish boy to heed such nonsense, spoken in anger by a lad I had just thrashed; that Bill Martin was a bad fellow, and envious of my being better off than himself; that if I listened to such senseless lies about her, it would make her miserable, and I should never know a happy hour myself."

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 trespass 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 associates 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 passions 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 coarse 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 associate 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.