was Ralph Morton. He was hardly twenty years old, of medium size but strongly built and, unlike too many of those immigrants, with a constitution not undermined by any vice.
He was the fourth son of a Kentish gentleman who had been killed in the war with Spain about the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. His home was near the mouth of the Thames. Having in early childhood shown a great aptitude for learning, it was intended that he should be a physician. He had learned all that could be taught in the village school and from such tutors as could be obtained in his native village. His father's death left his mother in such straitened circumstances that she could not send him to college, so he was sent to London to live with his brother-in-law and pick up what learning he could from the libraries to which he had access and from such occasional tutoring as he could get. This brother-in-law, a native of Ralph's village, had married Ralph's only sister (several years older than Ralph) before he had determined to convert his country property into money and abandon the dull and unprofitable life of a country gentleman for the career of a London merchant, although in that
