CHAPTER ONE.IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO A MAD HERO, A RECKLESS LOVER, AND ARUNAWAY HUSBAND--BACKWOODS JUVENILE TRAINING DESCRIBED--THE PRINCIPLESOF FIGHTING FULLY DISCUSSED, AND SOME VALUABLE HINTS THROWN OUT.March Marston was mad! The exact state of madness to which March hadattained at the age when we take up his personal history--namely,sixteen--is uncertain, for the people of the backwoods settlement inwhich he dwelt differed in their opinions on that point.The clergyman, who was a Wesleyan, said he was as wild as a youngbuffalo bull; but the manner in which he said so led his hearers toconclude that he did not think such a state of ungovernable madness tobe a hopeless condition, by any means. The doctor said he was as mad asa hatter; but this was an indefinite remark, worthy of a doctor who hadnever obtained a diploma, and required explanation, inasmuch as it wasimpossible to know _how_ mad he considered a hatter to be. Some of thetrappers who came to the settlement for powder and lead, said he was asmad as a grisly bear with a whooping-cough--a remark which, if true,might tend to throw light on the diseases to which the grisly bear isliable, but which failed to indicate to any one, except perhapstrappers, the extent of young Marston's madness. The carpenter and theblacksmith of the place--who were fast friends and had a pitched battleonly once a month, or twice at most--agreed in saying that he was as madas a wild-cat. In short, every one asserted stoutly that the boy wasmad, with the exception of the women of the settlement, who thought hima fine, bold, handsome fellow; and his own mother, who thought him aparagon of perfection, and who held the opinion (privately) that, in thewide range of the habitable globe there was not another like him--andshe was not far wrong!Now, the whole and sole reason why March Marston was thus deemed amadman, was that he displayed an insane tendency, at all times and inall manners, to break his own neck, or to make away with himself in somesimilarly violent and uncomfortable manner.There was not a fence in the whole countryside that March had not boltedover at full gallop, or ridden crash through if he could not go over it.There was not a tree within a circuit of four miles from the top ofwhich he had not fallen. There was not a pond or pool in theneighbourhood into which he had not soused at some period of his stormyjuvenile career, and there was not a big boy whom he had not fought andthrashed--or been thrashed by--scores of times.