This question produced a titter, and the insubordinate youngster was again told he must not talk.  After awhile he became accustomed to school and liked it.  He grew older and learned his letters.  It was a tedious task, the most difficult of which was to distinguish “N” from “U,” but he finally mastered them, and his education, he supposed, was complete.  After two or three years, he learned to read.  His father on one of his journeys to town brought to their forest home some excellent books, with bright, beautiful pictures.  He was now nine years old, and could read with some difficulty.  One of his books was a story about a man being wrecked on an island, and having saved a black man named Friday from death by savages.  Fernando never tired of this wonderful book, and, in his eagerness for the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, learned to read well without knowing it.

From reading one book, he came to read others, and lofty, ambitious thoughts took possession of his soul.  His mind, uncontaminated or dwarfed by the sins of civilization, early began to reach out for high and noble ideas.

His father had been a captain in the continental army, and had travelled all over the Atlantic States during the war for independence.  He told his children many stories of those dark days and sought early to instil in their young minds a love for their country, urging them ever to sustain its honor and its flag.

Fernando Stevens, even early in childhood, became a patriot.  He could be nothing more nor less than a patriot and lover of freedom with such training, and growing up in such an atmosphere.  With the bitter wrongs of George III. rankling in his heart, he came to despise all forms of monarchy, and to hate “redcoats.”  The cruelties of Cornwallis, Tarleton, Rawdon, Tryon and Butler were still in the minds of the people, and the boy, as he gazed on his father’s sword hanging on the cabin wall, often declared he would some day take it and avenge the wrongs done in years gone by.

Years passed on, and Fernando, in his quiet home in the West, grew to be a strong, healthy lad, with a constantly expanding mind.

CHAPTER II.

MORGIANNA.

It was early on the morning of June 13, 1796, just twenty years after the Declaration of Independence, that Captain Felix Lane, of the good ship Ocean Star, was on his voyage from Rio to Baltimore with a cargo of coffee.  The morning was specially bright, and the captain, as brave a man as ever paced a quarter deck, was in the best of spirits, for he expected soon to be home.  He had no wife and children to greet him on his return, for Lane was a bachelor.  He had served on board a privateer during the War of the Revolution and had done as much damage as any man on salt water to English merchantmen.  Like most brave men, Captain Lane had a generous soul, a kind heart, and there was not a man aboard his vessel who would not have died for him.  He preserved perfect discipline and respect through love rather than fear, for he was never known to be harsh with any of his crew.