Shall I ever forget the hour when I first overhauled these books?  I do not allude especially to Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, which is far from being a lively work for the young, but to the Arabian Nights, and particularly Robinson Crusoe.  The thrill that ran into my fingers’ ends then has not run out yet.  Many a time did I steal up to this nest of a room, and, taking the dog’s-eared volume from its shelf, glide off into an enchanted realm, where there were no lessons to get and no boys to smash my kite.  In a lidless trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed another motley collection of novels and romances, embracing the adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Charlotte Temple—­all of which I fed upon like a bookworm.

I never come across a copy of any of those works without feeling a certain tenderness for the yellow-haired little rascal who used to lean above the magic pages hour after hour, religiously believing every word he read, and no more doubting the reality of Sindbad the Sailor, or the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, than he did the existence of his own grandfather.

Against the wall at the foot of the bed hung a single-barrel shot-gun—­placed there by Grandfather Nutter, who knew what a boy loved, if ever a grandfather did.  As the trigger of the gun had been accidentally twisted off, it was not, perhaps, the most dangerous weapon that could be placed in the hands of youth.  In this maimed condition its “bump of destructiveness” was much less than that of my small brass pocket-pistol, which I at once proceeded to suspend from one of the nails supporting the fowling-piece, for my vagaries concerning the red man had been entirely dispelled.

Having introduced the reader to the Nutter House, a presentation to the Nutter family naturally follows.  The family consisted of my grandfather; his sister, Miss Abigail Nutter; and Kitty Collins, the maid-of-all-work.

Grandfather Nutter was a hale, cheery old gentleman, as straight and as bald as an arrow.  He had been a sailor in early life; that is to say, at the age of ten years he fled from the multiplication-table, and ran away to sea.  A single voyage satisfied him.  There never was but one of our family who didn’t run away to sea, and this one died at his birth.  My grandfather had also been a soldier—­a captain of militia in 1812.  If I owe the British nation anything, I owe thanks to that particular British soldier who put a musket-ball into the fleshy part of Captain Nutter’s leg, causing that noble warrior a slight permanent limp, but offsetting the injury by furnishing him with the material for a story which the old gentleman was never weary of telling and I never weary of listening to.  The story, in brief, was as follows.