Chapter 13

The earl reached Edinburg late at night. Mrs. Campbell entreated him to go to bed, and not seek out the street where the Bruces lived till morning.

"For I ken the place weel," said she, when she heard Lord Cairnforth inquiring for the address Helen had given. "It's ane o' thae high lands in the New Town—a grand flat wi' a fine ha' door—and then ye gang up an' up, till at the top flat ye find a bit nest like a bird's —and the folk living there are as ill off as a bird in winter-time."

The earl, weary as he had been, raised his head at this, and spoke decisively,

"Tell Malcolm to fetch a coach. I will go there tonight."

"Eh! Couldna ye bide till the morn? Ye'll just kill yourself,' my lamb," cried the affectionate woman, forgetting all her respect in her affection; but Lord Cairnforth understood it, and replied in the good old Scotch, which he always kept to warm his nurse's heart,

"Na, na, I'll no dee yet. Keep your heart content; we'll all soon be safe back at Cairnforth."

It seemed, in truth, as if an almost miraculous amount of endurance and energy had been given to that frail body for this hour of need. The earl's dark eyes were gleaming with light, and every tone of his voice was proud and manly, as the strong, manly soul, counteracting all physical infirmities, rose up for the protection for the one creature in all the world who to him had been most dear.

"You'll order apartments in the hotel, nurse. See that every thing is right and comfortable for Mrs. Bruce. I shall bring them back at once, if I can," was his last word as he drove off, alone with Malcolm: he wished to have no one with him who could possibly be done without.

It was nearly midnight when they stood at the foot of the high stair— six stories high—and Captain Bruce, they learned, was inhabiting the topmost flat. Malcolm looked at the earl uneasily.

"The top flat! Miss Helen canna be vera well aff, I doubt. Will I gang up and see, my lord"?

"No, I will go myself. Carry me, Malcolm."

And, in the old childish way, the big Highlander lifted his master up in his arms, and carried him, flight after flight, to the summit of the long dark stair. It narrowed up to a small door, very mean and shabby-looking, from the keyhole of which, when Malcolm hid his lantern, a light was seen to gleam.

"They're no awa' to their beds yet, my lord. Will I knock?"

Lord Cairnforth had no time to reply, if indeed he could have replied; for Malcolm's footsteps had been heard from within, and opening the door with an eager "Is that you, doctor?" there stood before them, in her very own likeness, Helen Cardross.

At least a woman like enough to the former Helen to leave no doubt it was herself. But a casual acquaintance would never have recognized her.

The face, once so round and rosy, was sharp and thin; the cheek-bones stood out; the bright complexion was faded; the masses of flaxen curls —her chief beauty—were all gone; and the thin hair was drawn up close under a cap. Her dress, once the picture of neatness, was neat still, but the figure had become gaunt and coarse, and the shabby gown hung upon her in forlorn folds, as if put on carelessly by one who had neither time nor thought to give to appearances.

She was evidently sitting up watching, and alone. The rooms which her door opened to view were only two, this topmost flat having been divided in half, and each half made into just "a but and a ben," and furnished in the meanest fashion of lodgings to let.

"Is it the doctor?" she said again, shading her light and peering down the dark stair.

"Helen!"

She recognized at once the little figure in Malcolm's arms.

"You—you! And you have come to me—come your own self! Oh, thank God!"

She leant against the doorway—not for weeping; she looked like one who had wept till she could weep no more, but breathing hard in heavy breaths, like sobs.

"Set me down, Malcolm, somewhere—any where. Then go outside."

Malcolm obeyed, finding a broken arm-chair and settling his master therein. Then, as he himself afterward told the story, though not till many years after, when nothing he told about that dear master's concerns could signify any more, he "gaed awa' doun and grat like a bairn."

Lord Cairnforth sat silent, waiting till Helen had recovered herself— Helen, whom, however changed, he would have known among a thousand. And then, with his quick observation, he took in as much of her circumstances as was betrayed by the aspect of the room, evidently kitchen, dining-room, and bedroom in one; for at the far end, close to the door that opened into the second apartment, which seemed a mere closet, was one of those concealed beds so common in Scotland, and on it lay a figure which occasionally stirred, moaned, or coughed, but very feebly, and for the most part lay still—very still.

Its face, placed straight on the pillow—and as the fire blazed up, the sharp profile being reflected in grotesque distinctness on the wall behind—was a man's face, thin and ghastly, the skin tightly drawn over the features, as is seen in the last stage of consumption.

Lord Cairnforth had never beheld death—not in any form. But he felt, by instinct, that he was looking upon it now, or the near approach to it, in the man who lay there, too rapidly passing into unconsciousness even to notice his presence—Helen's husband, Captain Bruce.

The dreadful fascination of the sight drew his attention even from Helen herself. He sat gazing at his cousin, the man who had deceived and wronged him, and not him only, but those dearer to him than himself —-the man whom, a day or two ago, he had altogether hated and despised. He dared do neither now. A heavier hand than that of mortal justice was upon his enemy. Whatever Captain Bruce was, whatever he had been, he was now being taken away from all human judgment into the immediate presence of Him who is at once the Judge and the Pardoner of sinners.

Awe-struck, the earl sat and watched the young man (for he could not be thirty yet), struck down thus in the prime of his days—carried away into the other world—while he himself, with his frail, flickering taper of a life, remained. Wherefore? At length, in a whisper, he called "Helen!" and she came and knelt beside the earl's chair.

"He is fast going," said she.

"I see that."

"In an hour or two, the doctor said."

"Then I will stay, if I may?"

"Oh yes."

Helen said it quite passively; indeed, her whole appearance as she moved about the room, and then took her seat by her husband's side, indicated one who makes no effort either to express or to restrain grief—who has, in truth, suffered till she can suffer no more.

The dying man was not so near death as the doctor had thought, for after a little he fell into what seemed a natural sleep. Helen leant her head against the wall and closed her eyes. But that instant was heard from the inner room a cry, the like of which Lord Cairnforth had never heard before—the sharp, waking cry of a very young infant.

In a moment Helen started up—her whole expression changed; and when, after a short disappearance, she re-entered the room with her child, who had dropped contentedly asleep again, nestling to her bosom, she was perfectly transformed. No longer the plain, almost elderly woman; she had in her poor worn face the look—which makes any face young, nay, lovely—the mother's look. Fate had not been altogether cruel to her; it had given her a child.

"Isn't he a bonnie bairn?" she whispered, as once again she knelt down by Lord Cairnforth's chair, and brought the little face down so that he could see it and touch it. He did touch it with his feeble fingers— the small soft cheek—the first baby-cheek he had ever beheld.

"It is a bonnie bairn, as you say; God bless it!" which, as she afterward told him, was the first blessing ever breathed over the child. "What is its name:" he asked by-and-by, seeing she expected more notice taken of it.

"Alexander Cardross—after my father. My son is a born Scotsman too —an Edinburg laddie. We were coming home, as fast as we could, to Cairnforth. He"—glancing toward the bed—"he wished it."

Thus much thought for her, the dying man had shown. He had been unwilling to leave his wife forlorn in a strange land. He had come "fast as he could," that her child might be born and her husband die at Cairnforth—at least so the earl supposed, nor subsequently found any reason to doubt. It was a good thing to hear then—good to remember afterward.

For hours the earl sat in the broken chair, with Helen and her baby opposite, watching and waiting for the end.

It did not come till near morning. Once during the night Captain Bruce opened his eyes and looked about him, but either his mind was confused, or—who knows?—made clearer by the approach of death, for he evinced no sign of surprise at the earl's presence in the room. He only fixed upon him a long, searching, inquiring gaze, which seemed to compel an answer.

Lord Cairnforth spoke:

"Cousin, I am come to take home with me your wife and child. Are you satisfied?"

"Yes."

"I promise you they shall never want. I will take care of them always."

There was a faint assenting movement of the dying head, and then, just as Helen went out of the room with her baby, Captain Bruce followed her with his eyes, in which the earl thought was an expression almost approaching tenderness. "Poor thing—poor thing! Her long trouble is over."

These were the last words he ever said, for shortly afterward he again fell into a sleep, out of which he passed quietly and without pain into sleep eternal. They looked at him, and he was still breathing; they looked at him a few minutes after, and he was, as Mr. Cardross would have expressed it, "away"—far, far away—in His safe keeping with whom abide the souls of both the righteous and the wicked, the living and the dead.

Let Him judge him, for no one else ever did. No one ever spoke of him but as their dead can only be spoken of either to or by the widow and the fatherless.

Without much difficulty—for, after her husband's death, Helen's strength suddenly collapsed, and she became perfectly passive in the earl's hands and in those of Mrs. Campbell—Lord Cairnforth learned all he required about the circumstances of the Bruce family.

They were absolutely penniless. Helen's boy had been born only a day or two after their arrival at Edinburg. Her husband's illness increased suddenly at the last, but he had not been quite incapacitated till she had gained a little strength, so as to be able to nurse him. But how she had done it—how then and for many months past she had contrived to keep body and soul together, to endure fatigue, privation, mental anguish, and physical weakness, was, according to good Mrs. Campbell, who heard and guessed a great deal more than she chose to tell, "just wonderful'." It could only be accounted for by Helen's natural vigor of constitution, and by that preternatural strength and courage which Nature supplies to even the saddest form of motherhood.

And now her brief term of wifehood—she had yet not been married two years—was over forever, and Helen Bruce was left a mother only. It was easy to see that she would be one of those women who remain such— mothers, and nothing but mothers, to the end of their days.

"She's ower young for me to say it o' her," observed Mrs. Campbell, in one of the long consultations that she and the earl held together concerning Helen, who was of necessity given over almost exclusively to the good woman's charge; "but ye'll see, my lord, she will look nae mair at any mortal man. She'll just spend her days in tending that wean o' hers—and a sweet bit thing it is, ye ken—by-and-by she'll get blithe and bonnie again. She'll be aye gentle and kind, and no dreary, but she'll never marry. Puir Miss Helen! She'll be ane o' thae widows that the apostle tells o'—that are 'widows indeed'."

And Mrs. Campbell, who herself was one of the number, heaved a sigh— perhaps for Helen, perhaps for herself, and for one whose very name was now forgotten; who had gone down to the bottom of Loch Beg when the Earl's father was drowned, and never afterward been seen, living or dead, by any mortal eye.

The earl gave no answer to his good nurse's gossip. He contented himself with making all arrangements for poor Helen's comfort, and taking care that she should be supplied with every luxury befitting not alone Captain Bruce's wife and Mr. Cardross's daughter, but the "cousin" of the Earl of Cairnforth. And now, whenever he spoke of her, it was invariably and punctiliously as "my cousin."

The baby too—Mrs. Campbell's truly feminine soul was exalted to infinte delight and pride at being employed by the earl to procure the most magnificent stock of baby clothes that Edinburg could supply. No young heir to a peerage could be appareled more splendidly than was, within a few days, Helen's boy. He was the admiration of the whole hotel; and when his mother made some weak resistance, she received a gentle message to the effect that the Earl of Cairnforth begged, as a special favor, to be allowed to do exactly as he liked with his little "cousin".

And every morning, punctual to the hour, the earl had himself taken up stairs into the infantile kingdom of which Mrs. Campbell was installed once more as head nurse, where he would sit watching with an amused curiosity, that was not without its pathos, the little creature so lately come into the world—to him, unfamiliar with babies, such a wondrous mystery. Alas! A mystery which it was his lot to behold—as all the joys of life—from the outside.

But, though life's joys were forbidden him, its duties seemed to accumulate daily. There was Mr. Cardross to be kept patient by the assurance that all was well, and that presently his daughter and his grandchild would be coming home. There was Alick Cardross, now a young clerk in the office of Menteith & Ross, to be looked after, and kept from agitating his sister by any questionings; and there was a tribe of young Menteiths always needing assistance or advice—now and then something more tangible than advice. Then there were the earl's Edinburg friends, who thronged round him in hearty welcome as soon as ever they heard he was again in the good old city, and would willingly have drawn him back again into that brilliant society which he had enjoyed so much.

He enjoyed it still—a little; and during the weeks that elapsed before Helen was able to travel, or do any thing but lie still and be taken care of, he found opportunity to mingle once more among his former associates. But his heart was always in that quiet room which he only entered once a day, where the newly-made widow sat with her orphan child at her bosom, and waited for Time, the healer, to soothe and bind up the inevitable wounds.

At last the day arrived when the earl, with his little cortege of two carriages, one his own, and the other containing Helen, her baby, and Mrs. Campbell, quitted Edinburg, and, traveling leisurely, neared the shores of Loch Beg. They did not come by the ferry, Lord Cairnforth having given orders to drive round the head of the loch, as the easiest and most unobtrusive way of bringing Helen home. Much he wondered how she bore it—the sight of the familiar hills—exactly the same— for it was the same time of year, almost the very day, when she had left Cairnforth; but he could not inquire. At length, after much thought, during the last stage of the journey, he bade Malcolm ask Mrs. Bruce if she would leave her baby for a little and come into the earl's carriage, which message she obeyed at once.

These few weeks of companionship, not constant, but still sufficiently close, had brought them back very much into their old brother and sister relation, and though nothing had been distinctly said about it, Helen had accepted passively all the earl's generosity both for herself and her child. Once or twice, when he had noticed a slight hesitation of uneasiness in her manner, Lord Cairnforth had said, "I promised him, you remember," and this had silenced her. Besides she was too utterly worn out and broken down to resist any kindness. She seemed to open her heart to it—Helen's proud, sensitive, independent heart—much as a plant, long dried up, withered, and trampled upon, opens itself to the sunshine and the dew.

But now her health, both of body and mind, had revived a little; and as she sat opposite him in her grave, composed widowhood, even the disguise of the black weeds could not take away a look that returned again and again, reminding the earl of the Helen of his childhood—the bright, sweet, wholesome-natured, high-spirited Helen Cardross.

"I asked you to come to me in the carriage," said he, after they had spoken a while about ordinary things. "Before we reach home, I think we ought to have a little talk upon some few matters which we have never referred to as yet. Are you able for this?"

"Oh yes, but—I can't—I can't!" and a sudden expression of trouble and fear darkened the widow's face. "Do not ask me any questions about the past. It is all over now; it seems like a dream— as if I had never been away from Cairnforth."

"Let it be so then, Helen, my dear," replied the earl, tenderly.
"Indeed, I never meant otherwise. It is far the best."

Thus, both at the time and ever after, he laid, and compelled others to lay, the seal of silence upon those two sad years, the secrets of which were buried in Captain Bruce's quiet grave in Grayfriars' church-yard.

"Helen," he continued, "I am not going to ask you a single question; I am only going to tell you a few things, which you are to tell your father at the first opportunity, so as to place you in a right position toward him, and whatever his health may be, to relieve his mind entirely both as to you and Boy."

"Boy" the little Alexander had already begun to be called. "Boy" par excellence, for even at that early period of his existence he gave tokens of being a most masculine character, with a resolute will of his own, and a power of howling till he got his will which delighted Nurse Campbell exceedingly. He was already a thorough Cardross—not in the least a Bruce; he inherited Helen's great blue eyes, large frame, and healthy temperament, and was, in short, that repetition of the mother in the son which Dame Nature delights in, and out of which she sometimes makes the finest and noblest men that the world ever sees.

"Boy has been wide awake these two hours, noticing every thing," said his mother, with a mother's firm conviction that this rather imaginative fact was the most interesting possible to every body. "He might have known the loch quite well already, by the way he kept staring at it."

"He will know it well enough by-and by," said the earl, smiling. "You are aware, Helen, that he and you are permanently coming home."

"To the Manse? yes! My dear father! he will keep us there during his life time. Afterward we must take our chance, my boy and I."

"Not quite that. Are you not aware—I thought, from circumstances, you must have guessed it long ago—that Cairnforth Castle, and my whole property, will be yours sometime?"

"I will tell you no untruth, Lord Cairnforth. I was aware of it. That is, he—I mean it was suspected that you had meant it once. I found this out—don't ask me how—shortly after I was married; and I determined, as the only chance of avoiding it—and several other things—never to write to you again; never to take the least means of bringing myself—us—back to your memory."

"Why so?"

"I wished you to forget us, and all connected with us, and to choose some one more worthy, more suitable, to inherit your property."

"But, Helen, that choice rested with myself alone," said the earl, smiling. "Has not a man the right to do what he likes with his own?"

"Yes, but—oh," cried Helen, earnestly, "do not talk of this. It caused me such misery once. Never let us speak of it again."

"I must speak of it," was the answer, equally earnest. "All my comfort —I will not say happiness; we have both learned, Helen, not to count too much upon happiness in this world—but all the peace of my future life, be it short or long, depends upon my having my heart's desire in this matter. It is my heart's desire, and no one shall forbid it. I will carry out my intentions, whether you agree to them or not. I will speak of them no more, if you do not wish it, but I shall certainly perform them. And I think it would be far better if we could talk matters out together, and arrange every thing plainly and openly before you go home to the Manse, if you prefer the Manse, though I could have wished it was to the Castle."

"To the Castle!"

"Yes. I intended to have brought you back from Edinburgh—all of you," added the earl, with emphasis, "to the Castle for life!"

Helen was much affected. She made no attempt either to resist or to reply.

"But now, my dear, you shall do exactly what you will about the home you choose—exactly what makes you most content, and your father also. Only listen to me just for five minutes, without interrupting me. I never could bear to be interrupted, you know."

Helen faintly smiled, and Lord Cairnforth, in a brief, business-like way, explained how, the day after his coming of age, he had deliberately, and upon what he—and Mr. Menteith likewise— considered just grounds, constituted her, Helen Cardross, as his sole heiress; that he had never altered his will since, and therefore she now was, and always would have been, and her children after her, rightful successors to the Castle and broad acres of Cairnforth.

"The title lapses," he added: "there will be no more Earls of Cairnforth. But your boy may be the founder of a new name and family, that may live and rule for generations along the shores of our loch, and perhaps keep even my poor name alive there for a little while."

Helen did not speak. Probably she too, with her clear common sense, saw the wisdom of the thing. For as, as the earl said, he had a right to choose his own heir—and as even the world would say, what better heir could he choose than his next of kin—Captain Bruce's child? What mother could resist such a prospect for her son? She sat, her tears flowing, but still with a great light in her blue eyes, as if she saw far away in the distance, far beyond all this sorrow and pain, the happy future of her darling—her only child.

"Of course, Helen, I could pass you over, and leave all direct to that young man of yours, who is, if I died intestate, my rightful heir. But I will not—at least, not yet. Perhaps, if I live to see him of age, I may think about making him take my name, as Bruce-Montgomerie. But meanwhile I shall educate him, send him to school and college, and at home he shall be put under Malcolm's care, and have ponies to ride and boats to row. In short, Helen," concluded the earl, looking earnestly in her face with that sad, fond, and yet peaceful expression he had, "I mean your boy to do all that I could not do, and to be all that I ought to have been. You are satisfied?"

"Yes—quite. I thank you. And I thank God."

A minute more, and the carriage stopped at the wicket-gate of the Manse garden.

There stood the minister, with his white locks bared, and his whole figure trembling with agitation, but still himself—stronger and better than he had been for many months.

"Papa! papa!" And Helen, his own Helen, was in his arms.

"Drive on," said Lord Cairnforth, hurriedly; "Malcolm, we will go straight to the Castle now."

And so, no one heeding him—they were too happy to notice any thing beyond themselves—the earl passed on, with a strange smile, not of this world at all, upon his quiet face, and returned to his own stately and solitary home.

Chapter 14

Good Mrs. Campbell had guessed truly that from this time forward Helen Bruce would be only a mother. Either she was one of those women in whom the maternal element predominates—who seem born to take care of other people and rarely to be taken care of themselves—or else her cruel experience of married life had forever blighted in her all wifely emotions—even wifely regrets. She was grave, sad, silent, for many months during her early term of widowhood, but she made no pretense of extravagant sorrow, and, except under the rarest and most necessary circumstances, she never even named her husband. Nothing did she betray about him, or her personal relations with him, even to her nearest and dearest friends. He had passed away, leaving no more enduring memory than the tomb-stone which Lord Cairnforth had erected in Grayfriars' church-yard.

—-Except his child, of whom it was the mother's undisguised delight that, outwardly and inwardly, the little fellow appeared to be wholly a Cardross. With his relatives on the father's side, after the one formal letter which she had requested should be written to Colonel Bruce announcing Captain Bruce's death, Helen evidently wished to keep up no acquaintance whatever—nay, more than wished; she was determined it should be so—with that quiet, resolute determination which was sometimes seen in every feature of her strong Scotch face, once so girlish, but it bore tokens of what she had gone through—of a battle from which no woman ever comes out unwounded or unscarred.

But, as before said, she was a mother, and wholly a mother, which blessed fact healed the young widow's heart better and sooner than any thing else could have done. Besides, in her case, there was no suspense, no conflict of duties—all her duties were done. Had they lasted after her child's birth the struggle might have been too hard; for mothers have responsibilities as well as wives, and when these conflict, as they do sometimes, God help her who has to choose between them! But Helen was saved this misfortune. Providence had taken her destiny out of her own hands, and here she was, free as Helen Cardross of old, in exactly the same position, and going through the same simple round of daily cares and daily avocations which she had done as the minister's active and helpful daughter.

For as nothing else but the minister's daughter would she, for the present, be recognized at Cairnforth. Lord Cairnforth's intentions toward herself or her son she insisted on keeping wholly secret, except, of course, as regarded that dear and good father.

"I may die," she said to the earl—"die before yourself; and if my boy grows up, you may not love him, or he may not deserve your love, in which case you must choose another heir. No, you shall be bound in no way externally; let all go on as heretofore. I will have it so."

And of all Lord Cairnforth's generosity she would accept of nothing for herself except a small annual sum, which, with her widow's pension from the East India Company, sufficed to make her independent of her father; but she did not refuse kindness to her boy.

Never was there such a boy. "Boy" he was called from the first, never "baby;" there was nothing of the baby about him. Before he was a year old he ruled his mother, grandfather, and Uncle Duncan with a rod of iron. Nay, the whole village were his slaves. "Miss Helen's bairn" was a little king every where. It might have gone rather hard for the poor wee fellow thus allegorically

   "Wearing on his baby brow the round
   And top of sovereignty"

That dangerous sovereignty—any human being—to wield, had there not been at least one person who was able to assume authority over him.

This was, strange to say—and yet not strange—the Earl of
Cairnforth.

From his earliest babyhood Boy had been accustomed to the sight of the sight of the motionless figure in the moving chair, who never touched him, but always spoke so kindly and looked around so smilingly; whom, he could perceive—for children are quicker to notice things than we some times think—his mother and grandfather invariably welcomed with such exceeding pleasure, and treated with never-failing respect and tenderness. And, as soon as he could crawl, the footboard of the mysterious wheeled chair became to the little man a perfect treasure-house of delight. Hidden there he found toys, picture-books, "sweeties"—such as he got nowhere else, and for which, before appropriating them, he was carefully taught to express thanks in his own infantile way, and made to understand fully from whom they came.

"It's bribery, and against my principles," the earl would say, half sadly. "But, if I did not give him things, how else could Boy learn to love me?"

Helen never answered this, no more than she used answer many similar speeches in the earl's childhood. She knew time would prove them all to be wrong.

What sort of idea the child really had of this wonderful donor, the source of most of his pleasures, who yet was so different externally from every body else; who never moved from the wheel-chair; who neither caressed him nor played with him, and whom he was not allowed to play with, but only lifted up sometimes to kiss softly the kind face which always smiled down upon him with a sort of "superior love"—what the child's childish notion of his friend was no one could of course discover. But it must have been a mingling of awe and affectionateness; for he would often—even before he could walk—crawl up to the little chair, steady himself by it, and then look into Lord Cairnforth's face with those mysterious baby eyes, full of questioning, but yet without the slightest fear. And once, when his mother was teaching him his first hymn—

"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child,"

Boy startled her by the sudden remark—one of the divine profanities that are often falling from the innocent lips of little children—

"I know Jesus. He is the earl."

And then Helen tried, in some simple way, to make the child understand about Lord Cairnforth, and how he had been all his life so heavily afflicted; but Boy could not comprehend it as affliction at all. There seemed to him something not inferior, but superior to all other people in that motionless figure, with its calm sweet face—who was never troubled, never displeased—whom every body delighted to obey, and at whose feet lay treasures untold.

"I think Boy likes me," Lord Cairnforth would say, when he met the upturned beaming face as the child, in an ecstasy of expectation, ran to meet him. "His love may last as long as the playthings do."

But the earl was mistaken, as Helen knew. His love-victory had been in something deeper than toys and "goodies." Even when their charm began to cease Boy still crept up to the little chair, and looked from the empty footboard up to the loving face, which no one, man, woman, or child, ever regarded without something far higher than pity.

And, by degrees, Boy, or "Carr"—which, as being the diminutive for his second Christian name, Cardross, he was often called now—found a new attraction in his friend. He would listen with wide-open eyes, and attention that never flagged, to the interminable "tories" which the earl told him, out of the same brilliant imagination which had once used to delight his uncles in the boat. And so, little by little, the child and the man grew to be "a pair of friends"—familiar and fond, but with a certain tender reverence always between them, which had the most salutary effect on the younger.

Whenever he was sick, or sorry, or naughty—and Master "Boy" could be exceedingly naughty sometimes—the voice which had most influence over him, the influence to which he always succumbed, came from the little wheeled chair. No anger did he ever find there—no dark looks or sharp tones—but he found steady, unbending authority; the firm will which never passed over a single fault, or yielded to a single whim. In his wildest passions of grief or wrath, it was only necessary to say to the child, "If the earl could see you!" to make him pause; and many and many a time, whenever motherly authority, which in this case was weakened by occasional over-indulgence and by an almost morbid terror of the results of the same, failed to conquer the child, Helen used, as a last resource, to bring him in her arms, set him down beside Lord Cairnforth, and leave him there. She never came back but she found Boy "good".

"He makes me good, too, I think," the earl would say now and then, "for he makes me happy."

It was true. Lord Cairnforth never looked otherwise than happy when he had beside him that little blossom of hope of the new generation— Helen's child.

As years went by, though he still lived alone at the Castle, it was by no means the secluded life of his youth and early manhood. He gradually gathered about him neighbors and friends. He filled his house occasionally with guests, of his own rank and of all ranks; people notable and worthy to be known. He became a "patron," as they called it in those days, of art and literature, and assembled around him all who, for his pleasure and their own benefit, chose to enjoy his hospitality.

In a quiet way, for he disliked public show, he was likewise what was termed a "philanthropist," but always on the system which he had learned in his boyhood from Helen and Mr. Cardross, that "charity begins at home;" with the father who guides well his own household; the minister whose footstep is welcomed at every door in his own parish; the proprietor whose just, wise, and merciful rule make him sovereign absolute in his own estate. This last especially was the character given along all the country-side to the Earl of Cairnforth.

His was not a sad existence; far from it. None who knew him, and certainly none who ever staid long with him in his own home, went away with that impression. He enjoyed what he called "a sunshiny life"— having sunshiny faces about him; people who knew how to accept the sweet and endure the bitter; to see the heavenly side even of sorrow; to do good to all, and receive good from all; avoiding all envies, jealousies, angers, and strifes, and following out literally the apostolic command, "As much as in you lies, live peaceably with all men."

And so the earl was, in the best sense of the word, popular. Every body liked him, and he liked every body. But deep in his heart—ay, deeper than any of these his friends and acquaintance ever dreamed— steadying and strengthening it, keeping it warm for all human uses, yet calm with the quiet sadness of an eternal want, lay all those emotions which are not likings, but loves; not sympathies, but passions; but which with him were to be, in this world, forever dormant and unfulfilled.

Never, let the Castle be ever so full of visitors, or let his daily cares, his outward interest, and his innumerable private charities be ever so great, did he omit driving over twice or thrice a week to spend an hour or two at the Manse—in winter, by the study fire; in summer, under the shade of the green elm-trees—the same trees where he had passed that first sunny Sunday when he came a poor, lonely, crippled orphan child into the midst of the large, merry family—all scattered now.

The minister, Helen, and Boy were the sole inmates left at the Manse, and of these three the latter certainly was the most important. Hide it as she would, the principal object of the mother's life was her only child. Many a time, as Lord Cairnforth sat talking with her, after his old fashion, of all his interests, schemes, labors, and hopes—hopes solely for others, and labors, the end of which he knew he would never see—he would smile to himself, noticing how Helen's eye wandered all the while—wandered to where that rosy young scapegrace rode his tiny pony—the earl's gift—up and down the gravel walks, or played at romps with Malcolm, or dug holes in the flower-beds, or got into all and sundry of the countless disgraces which were forever befalling Boy; yet which, so lovable was the little fellow, were as continually forgiven, and, behind his back, even exalted into something very like merits.

But once—and it was an incident which, whether or not Mrs. Bruce forgot it herself, her friend never did, since it furnished a key to much of the past, and a serious outlook for the future—Boy committed an error which threw his mother into an agony of agitation such as she had not betrayed since she came back, a widow, to Cairnforth.

Her little son told a lie! It was a very small lie, such as dozens of children tell—are punished and pardoned—but a lie it was. It happened on August morning, when the raspberries for which the Manse was famous. He was desired not to touch them—"not to lay a finger on them," insisted the mother. And he promised. But, alas! The promises of four years old are not absolutely reliable; and so that which happened once in a more ancient garden happened in the garden of the Manse. Boy plucked and ate. He came back to his mother with his white pinafore all marked and his red mouth redder still with condemnatory stains. Yet, when asked "if he had touched the raspberries," he opened that wicked mouth and said, unblushingly, "No!"

Of course it was an untruth—self-evident; in its very simplicity almost amusing; but the earl was not prepared for the effect it seemed to have upon Helen. She started back, her lips actually blanched and her eyes glowing.

"My son has told a lie!" she cried, and kept repeating it over and over again. "My son has looked me in the face and told me a lie—his first lie!"

"Hush, Helen!" for her manner seemed actually to frighten the child.

"No, I can not pass it over! I dare not! He must be punished. Come!"

She seized Boy by the hand, looking another way, and was moving off with him, as if she hardly knew what she was doing.

"Helen!" called the earl, almost reproachfully; for, in his opinion, out of all comparison with the offense seemed the bitterness with which the mother felt it, and was about to punish it. "Tell me, first, what are you going to do with the child?"

"I hardly know—I must think—must pray. What if my son, my only son, should inherit—I mean, if he should grow up a liar?"

That word "inherit" betrayed her. No wonder now at the mother's agony of fear—she who was mother to Captain Bruce's son. Lord Cairnforth guessed it all.

"I understand," said he. "But—"

"No," Helen interrupted, "you need understand nothing, for I have told you nothing. Only I must kill the sin—the fatal sin—at the very root. I must punish him. Come, child!"

"Come back, Helen," said the earl; and something in the tone made her obey at once, as occasionally during her life Helen had been glad to obey him, and creep under the shelter of a stronger will and clearer judgment than her own. "You are altogether mistaken, my dear friend. Your boy is only a child, and errs as such, and you treat him as if he had sinned like a grown-up man. Be reasonable. We will both take care of him. No fear that he will turn out a liar!"

Helen hesitated; but still her looks were so angry and stern, all the mother vanished out of them, that the boy, instead of clinging to her, ran away crying, and hid himself behind Lord Cairnforth's chair.

"Leave him to me, Helen. Can not you trust me—me—with your son!"

Mrs. Bruce paused.

"Now," said the earl, wheeling himself round a little, so that he came face to face with the sobbing child, "lift up your head, Boy, and speak the truth like a man to me and to your mother—see! She is listening. Did you touch those raspberries?"

"No!"

"Cardross!" Calling him by his rarely-spoken name, not his pet-name, and fixing upon him eyes, not angry, but clear and searching, that compelled the truth even from a child, "think again. You must tell us!"

"No, me didn't touch them," answered Boy, dropping his head in conscious shame. "Not with me fingers. Me just opened me mouth and they popped in."

Lord Cairnforth could hardly help smiling at the poor little sinner— the infant Jesuit attaining his object by such an ingenious device; but the mother didn't smile, and her look was harder than ever.

"You hear! If not a lie, it was a prevarication. He who lies is a scoundrel, but he who prevaricates is a scoundrel and coward too. Sooner than Boy should grow up like—like that, I would rather die. No, I would rather see him die; for I might come in time to hate my own son."

By these fierce words, and by the gleaming eyes, which made a sudden and total change in the subdued manner, and the plain, almost elderly face under the widow's cap that Helen always wore, Lord Cairnforth guessed, more than he had ever guessed before, of what the sufferings of her married life had been.

"My friend," he said, and there was infinite pity as well as tenderness in his voice, "believe me, you are wrong. You are foreboding what, please God, will never happen. God does not deal with us in that manner. He bids us do His will, each of us individually, without reference to the doings or misdoings of any other person. And if we obey Him, I believe He takes care we shall not suffer—at least not forever, even in this world. Do not be afraid. Boy," calling the little fellow, who was now sobbing in bitterest contrition behind the wheeled chair, "come and kiss your mother. Promise her that you will never again vex her by telling a lie."

"No, no, no. Me'll not vex mamma. Good mamma! Pretty mamma! Boy so sorry!"

And he clung closely and passionately to his mother, kissing her averted face twenty times over.

"You see, Helen, you need not fear," said the earl.

Helen burst into tears.

After that day it came to be a general rule that, when she could not manage him herself, which not infrequently happened—for the very similarity in temperament and disposition between the mother and son made their conflicts, even at this early age, longer and harder—Helen brought Boy up to the Castle and left him, sometimes for hours together, in the library with Lord Cairnforth. He always came home to the Manse quiet and "good."

And so out of babyhood into boyhood, and thence into youth, grew the earl's adopted son; for practically it became that relationship, though no distinct explanation was ever given, or any absolute information vouchsafed, for indeed there was none who had a right to inquire; still, the neighborhood and the public at large took it for granted that such were Lord Cairnforth's intentions toward his little cousin.

As for the boy's mother, she led a life very retired—more retired than even Helen Cardross, doing all her duties as the minister's daughter, but seldom appearing in society. And society speculated little about her. Sometimes, when the Castle was full of guests, Mrs. Bruce appeared among them, still in her widow's weeds, to be received by Lord Cairnforth with marked attention and respect—always called "my cousin," and whoever was present, invariably requested to take the head of his table; but, except at these occasional seasons, and at birthdays, new years, and so on, Helen was seldom seen out of the Manse, and was very little known to the earl's ordinary acquaintance.

But every body in the whole peninsula knew the minister's grandson, young Master Bruce. The boy was tall of his age—not exactly handsome, being too like his mother for that; nevertheless, the robustness of form, which in her was too large for comeliness, became in him only manly size and strength. He was athletic, graceful, and active; he learned to ride almost as soon as he could walk; and, under Malcolm's charge, was early initiated in all the mysteries of moor and loch. By fourteen years of age Cardross Bruce was the best shot, the best fisher, the best hand at an oar, of all the young lads in the neighborhood.

Then, too, though allowed to run rather wild, he was unmistakably a gentleman. Though he mixed freely with every body in the parish, he was neither haughty nor over-familiar with any one. He had something of the minister's manner with inferiors—frank, gentle, and free—winning both trust and love, and yet it was impossible to take liberties with him. And some of the elder people in the clachan declared the lad had at times just "the merry glint o' the minister's e'en" when Mr. Cardross first came to the parish as a young man with his young wife.

He was an old man now, "wearin' awa'," but slowly and peacefully; preaching still, though less regularly; for, to his great delight, his son Duncan, having come out creditably at college, had been appointed his assistant and successor. Uncle Duncan—only twelve years his nephew's senior—was also appointed by Lord Cairnforth tutor to "Boy" Bruce. The two were very good friends, and not unlike one another. "Ay, he's just a Cardross," was the universal remark concerning young Bruce. No one had ever hinted that the lad was like his father.

He was not. Nature seemed mercifully to have forgotten to perpetuate that type of character which had given Mr. Menteith formerly, and others since, such a justifiable dread of the Bruce family, and such a righteous determination to escape them. Lord Cairnforth still paid the annuity, but on condition that no one of his father's kindred should ever interfere, in the smallest degree, with Helen's child.

This done, both he and she trusted to the strong safeguards of habit and education, and all other influences which so strongly modify character, to make the boy all that they desired him to be, and to counteract those tendencies which, as Lord Cairnforth plainly perceived, were Helen's daily dread. It was a struggle, mysterious as that which visible human free-will is forever opposing (apparently) to invisible fate, the end of which it is impossible to see, and yet we struggle on.

Thus laboring together with one hope, one aim, and one affection, all centered in this boy, Lord Cairnforth and Mrs. Bruce passed many a placid year. And when the mother's courage failed her—when her heart shrank in apprehension from real terrors or from chimeras of her own creating, her friend taught her to fold patiently her trembling hands, and say, as she herself and the minister had first taught him in his forlorn boyhood, the one only prayer which calms fear and comforts sorrow—the lesson of the earl's whole life—"Thy will be done!"