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 N orth 
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 
