If his mother's unexpected death was a shock to poor Matt, it was even more of a one to Mr. Lincoln. Again was the father and husband's mind unbalanced; this time far worse than ever before. He escaped from the asylum, made a dramatic appearance at the home during the burial services, and then disappeared, no one knew where.
Matt's only remaining relative at this time was his Uncle Dan, a brother to Mr. Lincoln. He took charge of Matt, and took the boy to his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut. At the same time a diligent search for Mr. Lincoln was begun.
The search for Matt's father was unsuccessful, although continued for several weeks. It was learned that he had boarded a train in Jersey City bound for Philadelphia, but there all trace of his whereabouts was lost.
Matt lived with his Uncle Dan for four years. He went to school in Bridgeport part of the time, and when not learning, could be found at Mr. Lincoln's ship chandlery, a large place, situated down near the docks.
It would seem that the tragic occurrences through which he had passed would have made Matt melancholy and low-spirited, but such was not the case. Mrs. Lincoln had naturally been of a light heart, and the boy partook of much of his mother's disposition. He loved a free-and-easy life, loved to roam from place to place. With a captain who was a friend of Uncle Dan, he had made a trip to Bangor and Augusta, and he had likewise put in two weeks at a lumber camp in Maine, and a month during the summer at a hotel among the White Mountains, doing odd jobs for the proprietor.
"A rolling stone and nothing less," Uncle Dan had called him, over and over again, and the title seemed to fit Matt exactly.
At length, when Matt was fourteen years old, Uncle Dan Lincoln, who was then an elderly man, was taken with pneumonia, and died two weeks later. His wife, a crabbed woman, who detested Matt, and was glad when he was out of the house, at once sold out the chandlery, and went to live with her folks in a small village in Vermont. Thus Matt was thrown out upon his own resources with no capital but a ten dollar bill, which his Uncle Dan had quietly slipped into his hand only a few days before the end.
Matt remained around Bridgeport but two days after his uncle's funeral. Then he struck up a bargain with the captain of a schooner which was loaded with freight for Philadelphia, and sailed for that city.