heard more. Perhaps there was no indenture, for I do not recollect
to have signed one; but if there were he certainly was too conscious
of his guilt to dare to enforce his right, now that he found me
acknowledged and protected by a man so powerful as my grandfather. It
is possible indeed that he should never have heard what became of me;
though I consider that as very improbable. While I was at Oxford, I
was informed that he died raving, with a fever in the brain.

I have mentioned the encouragement I received to pursue inquiry:
one of the first things the rector thought of was my education. Now
that he had owned I was indeed his grandson, it was fitting that
his grandson should be a gentleman. In the parish committed to his
pastoral guidance was a grammar school, that had been endowed, not
indeed by Squire Mowbray or his ancestors, but, by the family that
in times of yore had held the same estate. The pious founder had
vested the government not entirely in his own family, and its
representatives, but in that family and the rector for the time being.
This circumstance, and many others of a parochial nature, conduced to
a kind of partition of power, well calculated to excite contempt in
the wealthy Squire, who was likewise lord of the manor, and inflame
jealousy in heaven's holy vice-gerent, whose very office on earth is
to govern, and to detect, reprove, and rectify, the wanderings of us
silly sheep.

To this school I was immediately sent; and here, among other
competitors was the Squire's eldest son, Hector Mowbray. He was two
years older than I, and in the high exercise of that power to which he
was the redoubted heir. To insult the boys, seize their marbles, split
their tops, cuff them if they muttered, kick them if they complained
to the master, get them flogged if they kicked and cuffed in return,