Mr. Lloyd was very much pleased when he heard of Bert's success in
getting Frank to the Sunday school. He recognised in Bert many of those
qualities which make a boy a leader among his companions, and his desire
was that his son's influence should always tell for that which was
manly, pure, and upright. To get him interested in recruiting for the
Sunday school was a very good beginning in church work, and Mr. Lloyd
felt thankful accordingly.

Neither was he alone in feeling pleased and thankful. Mr. John Bowser,
Frank's father, although he showed great indifference to both the
intellectual and moral welfare of his boy, was, nevertheless, not
opposed to others taking an interest in him. He cared too little about
either church or Sunday school to see that Frank was a regular
attendant. But he was very willing that somebody else should take an
interest in the matter. Moreover, he felt not a little complacency over
the fact that his son was chosen as a companion by Lawyer Lloyd's son.
Engrossed as he was in the making of money, a big, burly, gruff,
uncultured contractor, he found time somehow to acquire a great respect
for Mr. Lloyd. He thought him rather too scrupulous and straightforward
a man to be _his_ lawyer, but he admired him greatly, nevertheless; and,
although he said nothing about it, secretly congratulated himself upon
the way things were going. He had little idea that the circle of
influence Bert had unconsciously started would come to include him
before its force would be spent.

CHAPTER XIII.

BERT AT HOME.

It was an article of faith in the Lloyd family that there was not a
house in Halifax having a pleasanter situation than theirs, and they
certainly had very good grounds for their belief. Something has already
been told about its splendid view of the broad harbour, furrowed with
white-capped waves, when of an afternoon the breeze blew in smartly from
the great ocean beyond; of its snug security from northern blasts; of
the cosy nook it had to itself in a quiet street; and of its ample
exposure to the sunshine. But, perhaps, the chief charm of all was the
old fort whose grass-grown casemates came so close to the foot of the
garden, that ever since Bert was big enough to jump, he had cherished a
wild ambition to leap from the top of the garden fence to the level top
of the nearest casemate.

This old fort, with its long, obsolete, muzzle-loading thirty-two
pounders, was associated with Bert's