The mind of a child, like the mind of a grown person, requires excitement:  and, as Anthony could neither read nor write, and his father seldom deigned to notice him, he was forced to seek abroad for those amusements which he could not obtain at home.  By the time he had completed his eighth year he was to be seen daily mingling with the poor boys in the village, with face unwashed and hair uncombed, and clothes more ragged and dirty than those of his indigent associates.

One fine summer afternoon, while engaged in the exciting game of pitch-and-toss, a handsome elderly gentleman rode up to the group of boys, and asked the rosy ragged Anthony if he would run before him and open the gate that led to the Hall.

“Wait awhile,” cried the little fellow, adroitly poising the halfpenny that he was about to throw, on the tip of his finger.  “If I win by this toss I will show you the way to my father’s.”

“Your father!” said the gentleman, surveying attentively the ragged child.  “Are you the gardener’s son?”

“No, no,” replied the boy, laughing and winking to his companions; “not quite so bad as that.  My father is a rich man, though he acts like a poor one, and lets me, his only son, run about the streets without shoes.  But, did I belong to skin-flint Pike, instead of one slice of bread to my milk and water, I might chance to get none.  My father is the old Squire, and my name is Anthony Marcus Hurdlestone.”

“His father and grandfather’s names combined—­names of evil omen have they been to me,” sighed the stranger, who was, indeed, no other than Algernon Hurdlestone, who for eight long years had forgotten the solemn promise given to Elinor, that he would be a friend and guardian to her child.  Nor would he now have remembered the circumstance, had not his own spoilt Godfrey been earnestly teasing him for a playmate.  “Be a good boy, Godfrey, and I will bring you home a cousin to be a brother and playfellow,” he said, as his conscience smote him for this long neglected duty; and ordering his groom to saddle his horse, he rode over to Oak Hall to treat with the miser for his son.

“Alas!” he thought, “can this neglected child be the son of my beautiful Elinor, and heir to the richest commoner in England?  But the boy resembles my own dear Godfrey, and, for Elinor’s sake, I will try and rescue him from the barbarous indifference of such a father.”

Then, telling the bare-footed urchin that he was his uncle Algernon, and that he should come to Norgood Hall, and live with him, and have plenty to eat and drink, and pretty clothes to wear, and a nice pony of his own to ride, and a sweet little fellow of his own age to play with, he lifted the astonished and delighted child before him on the saddle, and was about to proceed to the Hall.

“The Squire does not live at the Hall,” said the child, pulling at the rein, in order to give the horse another direction.  “Oh, no; he is too poor (and he laughed outright) to live there.”