how can it
ever learn to walk? It would, as soon as you loosed the bonds, find
itself not free, but paralyzed--as helpless a creature as myself."

Helen turned away from watching her boy, and laid her hand tenderly, in
her customary caress, on the feeble hand, which yet had been the means
of accomplishing so much.

"You should not speak so," she said. "Scarcely ever is there a more
useful life than yours."

"More useful, certainly, than any one once expected--except you,
Helen. I have tried to make you not ashamed of me these thirty years."
"Is it so many? Thirty years since the day you first came to the
Manse?"

"Yes; you know I was forty last birthday. Who would have thought my
life would have lasted so long? But it can not last forever; and before
I am 'away' as your dear old father would say, I should like to leave
you quite settled and happy about that boy."

"Who says I am not happy?" answered Mrs. Bruce, rather sharply.

"Nobody; but I see it myself sometimes--when you get that restless,
anxious look--there it is now! Helen, I must have it away. I think
it would trouble me in my grave if I left you unhappy," added the earl,
regarding her with that expression of yearning tenderness which she had
been so used to all her days that she rarely noticed it until the days
came when she saw it no more.

"I am not unhappy," she said, earnestly. "Why should I be? My dear
father keeps well still--he enjoys a green old age. And is not my
son growing up every thing that a mother's heart could desire?"

"I do believe it. Cardross is a good boy--a very good boy. But the
metal has never been tested--as the soundest metal always requires to
be--and until this is done, you will never rest. I had rather it
were done during my lifetime than afterward. Helen, I particularly wish
the boy to go to college."

The earl spoke so decidedly that Mrs. Bruce replied with only the brief
question "Where?"

"To Edinburg; because there he would not be left quite alone. His uncle
Alick would keep an eye upon him, and he could be boarded with Mrs.
Menteith, whose income would be none the worse for the addition I would
make to it; for of course, Helen, if he goes, it must be--not exactly
as my declared heir, since you dislike that so much, but--as my
cousin and nearest of kin, which he is undeniably."

Helen acquiesced in silence.

"I have a right to him, you see," said Lord Cairnforth, smiling, "and
really I am rath