The woman who nurtured me as my mother was rather capricious than kind, and my infancy passed away, like that of more favoured scions of fortune, in alternate chastisement and caresses.

In good truth, Kinching Meg had the shrillest voice and the heaviest hand of the whole crew; and I cannot complain of injustice, since she treated me no worse than the rest.

Notwithstanding the irregularity of my education, I grew up strong and healthy, and my reputed mother had taught me so much fear for herself that she left me none for anything else; accordingly, I became bold, reckless, and adventurous, and at the age of thirteen was as thorough a reprobate as the tribe could desire.

At that time a singular change befell me: we (that is, my mother and myself) were begging not many miles hence at the door of a rich man's house in which the mistress lay on her death-bed.

That mistress was my real mother, from whom Meg had stolen me in the first year of existence.