.

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 w