After nigh fourscore and ten years of life that Youth is nearer to me now than many things which befell me later.  I recall as yesterday the day Captain Clapsaddle rode to the Hall, his horse covered with sweat, and the reluctant tidings of Captain Jack Carvel’s death on his lips.  And strangely enough that day sticks in my memory as of delight rather than sadness.  When my poor mother had gone up the stairs on my grandfather’s arm the strong soldier took me on his knee, and drawing his pistol from his holster bade me snap the lock, which I was barely able to do.  And he told me wonderful tales of the woods beyond the mountains, and of the painted men who tracked them; much wilder and fiercer they were than those stray Nanticokes I had seen from time to time near Carvel Hall.  And when at last he would go I clung to him, so he swung me to the back of his great horse Ronald, and I seized the bridle in my small hands.  The noble beast, like his master, loved a child well, and he cantered off lightly at the captain’s whistle, who cried “bravo” and ran by my side lest I should fall.  Lifting me off at length he kissed me and bade me not to annoy my mother, the tears in his eyes again.  And leaping on Ronald was away for the ferry with never so much as a look behind, leaving me standing in the road.

And from that time I saw more of him and loved him better than any man save my grandfather.  He gave me a pony on my next birthday, and a little hogskin saddle made especially by Master Wythe, the London saddler in the town, with a silver-mounted bridle.  Indeed, rarely did the captain return from one of his long journeys without something for me and a handsome present for my mother.  Mr. Carvel would have had him make his home with us when we were in town, but this he would not do.  He lodged in Church Street, over against the Coffee House, dining at that hostelry when not bidden out, or when not with us.  He was much sought after.  I believe there was scarce a man of note in any of the colonies not numbered among his friends.  ’Twas said he loved my mother, and could never come to care for any other woman, and he promised my father in the forests to look after her welfare and mine.  This promise, you shall see, he faithfully kept.

Though you have often heard from my lips the story of my mother, I must for the sake of those who are to come after you, set it down here as briefly as I may.  My grandfather’s bark ‘Charming Sally’, Captain Stanwix, having set out from Bristol on the 15th of April, 1736, with a fair wind astern and a full cargo of English goods below, near the Madeiras fell in with foul weather, which increased as she entered the trades.  Captain Stanwix being a prudent man, shortened sail, knowing the harbour of Funchal to be but a shallow bight in the rock, and worse than the open sea in a southeaster.  The third day he hove the Sally to; being a stout craft and not overladen she weathered the gale with the loss of a jib, and was about making topsails again when