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Eventually he would have been consigned to the workhouse school until he had arrived at an age when he might possibly have been able to learn something, at which moment this would very properly have been prevented by his being transferred to the enlivening employment of rook-keeping, from which he would have gradually risen to the position of a day-labourer upon some neighbouring farm, unless he had evinced sufficient intellectual ability to have aspired to the rank and dignity of “waggoner’s mate.” This brilliant career, however, was not open to our hero in the benighted days of which I speak. This being so, he not unnaturally did something else. He disappeared from the eyes of the world in a manner which would have been perfectly marvellous if there had been anybody who cared to marvel at it. This, however, was not the case.
The venerable Druid who had sacrificed the child’s father took no trouble about the child, though he would probably have sacrificed him too with the greatest pleasure had any hint been given him upon the subject. The people who had permitted and sanctioned the deed never gave a thought to the infant who had thereby been left destitute. Public opinion was not in existence, and as this island had not then, as it has now, what is popularly called “the blessing of a Free Press,” the attention of the neighbourhood was not called to such trifling occurrences. So Smith’s father perished and Smith disappeared, without notice or remark from anybody. What really happened to the lad is known, of course, to me, and is sufficiently laughable. He wandered into the forest, and became the friend and companion of the toads, for which Windsor has always been famous.
Now, although mortals are not generally aware of the fact, it is well known, brother, to you and me, that toads are among the wisest and most intelligent of animals. They may be called ugly by those who only judge of character and worth by the standard of that beauty which is after all but skin-deep; they may be termed slimy and unpleasant by those who cannot see below the surface; they may even be deemed stupid by people who are unable to discern the intellectual vigour which shines forth in the extraordinary brightness of the eye of a well-bred toad. But, as we know full well, a toad is one of the most powerful of created beings in his knowledge of magic and of hidden art. How many are the buried treasures over which a toad sits as guardian, laughing to himself at the busy mortals above who would give their eyes and ears to possess that which is really within their reach if they did but know it! And, apart from this peculiar point of view, how happy the life of a well-regulated toad!—how simple his tastes; how free from care his heart, how tranquil his existence, so long as he is permitted to enjoy it without being stamped upon by the cruel heel of mortal, or swallowed by the voracious mouth of snake. With the toads of the forest, then, Smith made his home; and often did I see him in those old days, sporting with his strange playmates among the roots of the gigantic trees which grew down to my very water’s edge, sometimes playing leap-frog, at other moments hopping races, and not unfrequently reclining by the side of one of the worthy toads, his arm thrown around it, and its body serving as a resting-place for his infant head and shoulders.
From these strange instructors did little Smith receive an education which fitted him for the career which he had chalked out for himself. From them he learned more than ordinary mortals could have taught him; and meanwhile the wholesome and quiet life which he led in the forest caused him to increase daily in bodily strength, so that he bid fair to rival Hercules before he arrived at manhood.