es--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