His guardian then thought of sending him to Newfoundland to assist in a storehouse, and for this purpose entered into correspondence with a Mr. Holdsworth, of Dartmouth, who consented to see the boy. When, however, he had cast eyes on the puny, sickly child, he declined to have anything to do with him, and Carlile then sent him on board a coaster at Brixham, with a man named Full, plying between Dartmouth and Plymouth, and sometimes going as far as Portsmouth. In this boat he continued for a twelvemonth. On Christmas Day, 1770, he was summoned back to Ashburton by his godfather. It seemed that the fishwives who went from Brixham to Ashburton with their wares had spoken there pretty freely of the little ragged urchin who wandered about the quay, and of his delicacy and of the rough treatment to which he was exposed. This roused a strong feeling in Ashburton against Carlile, and he was constrained to bring the boy back so as to allay the prejudice his conduct had awakened. He sent him again to school in the old chapel, where he sat on the benches at the long desks, and looked up at the huge plaster-work gaily-painted shield and bearings of Ashburton over the headmaster’s desk, and those of the benefactors to the school down the sides. Here he worked assiduously at his books and made astonishing progress. He was even employed as a monitor to teach the younger boys, and received a few coppers for his services. The ambition of his young heart was to qualify himself to take the place of the old schoolmaster, Smerdon, who was becoming infirm and past work. But these dreams of future happiness in the school where he had passed his most enjoyable hours were dashed. Carlile wanted to get the lad out of Ashburton and relieve his pocket of the burden of finding him clothes and bread and butter. He was determined to wash his hands of the orphan altogether; and accordingly, without consulting the boy’s wishes, indentured him in January, 1772, to a cobbler, a cousin of his in Exeter, with whom he would be bound to remain till he was twenty-one. The shoemaker with whom he was placed was a sour and narrow-minded Presbyterian, who read nothing but controversial pamphlets relative to a theological dispute then raging between two of the clergy of Exeter and some of the Dissenting preachers of the city, and of these controversial pamphlets the cobbler read only those of his own side. Gifford had no books save a Bible, a Thomas à Kempis, and a black-letter romance, _Parismus and Parismenus_, that had belonged to his mother, together with some chapbooks, _The Golden Bull_, and such like trifles. However, he found a stray treatise on algebra in a lodging-house, and commandeered it. But this last book was not at this time of any advantage to him, as to understand it a preliminary knowledge of simple equations was necessary--and what “equations” meant he knew no more than did the man in the moon, who had at his command no library whatsoever.