OLD BILL SMITH, THE SILENT HUNTER. 213 



nameless child — for Smith can hardly be called a name ! — 

 ■was apprenticeship under the system of indenture which pre- 

 vailed quite generally among the colonies. We hear of him 

 as indentured to an old farmer in the northern part of North 

 Carolina. He must have been eight years old or thereabouts 

 at this time. 



This old farmer, I suspect, was a veritable brute ; for 

 although the terms of indenture, besides a sufficiency of food 

 and clothing, together with comfortable lodgings, expressly 

 stipulated that the apprentice, thus bound for a term of years, 

 for and in consideration of his services, was to be afforded 

 the opportunity and allowed the necessary time for the acqui- 

 sition of a good common school education. 



This part of his bond and duty, it seems, the old curmud- 

 geon never did or would fulfill, thinking, I suppose, that learn- 

 ing was only one of the worldly vanities, and would most 

 likely turn the boy's head. "William seems to have been, from 

 the beginning, remarkable more for wilfulness than any other 

 trait ; and I suppose it was quite as much because old Saun- 

 ders refused to send him to school as from any inherent love 

 of learning, that he determined to learn to read anyhow. 



Little blue-eyed Mattie Saunders, who seemed a stray 

 angel by the fireside of the old beast who called her child, 

 somehow or other divined the wishes and purpose of the 

 young Smith ; and as her excellent mother had taken care to 

 learn her to read as soon as she could speak, from a sort of 

 melancholy presentiment that she had not long to tarry with 

 her, she proved a very capable and certainly remarkably 

 successful instructress. Certain it is, that if he did not 

 take to learning for learning's own sweet sake altogether, 

 there proved to be a most salutary attraction in that little 

 white and dumpy finger, gliding from letter to letter, to fix 

 the attention of the wilful and headstrong boy. 



He made such rapid progress that he soon became the 

 teacher of his young mistress in turn ; and as this relation 



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