She thought the episode had passed out of his mind, but she did not know everything that lay in the boy's heart.

He and Tod had discussed it time and again, and had wondered over his own name and that of his nameless father, as boys wonder, but they had come to no conclusion.

No one in the village could tell them, for no one ever knew.

He had asked the doctor, but had only received a curious answer.
"What difference does it make, son, when you have such a mother?
You have brought her only honor, and the world loves her the better because of you.

Let it rest until she tells you; it will only hurt her heart if you ask her now." The doctor had already planned out the boy's future; he was to be sent to Philadelphia to study medicine when his schooling was over, and was then to come into his office and later on succeed to his practice.
Captain Holt would have none of it.
"He don't want to saw off no legs," the bluff old man had blurted out when he heard of it.