the watchmaker
would have to pay for them or not, would depend upon the degree of care
it would have required to save them. For instance, if he locked them all
up with special care, and particularly the repeater, and then the
building were struck with lightning and the watches all destroyed, he
would not have to pay for any of them; for this would be an inevitable
accident, which all his care could not guard against. It would have been
as likely to have happened to my repeater, if I had kept it at home.

"But suppose now he should hang all three watches up at his window, and
a boy in the street should accidentally throw a stone and hit the
window, so that the stone should go through the glass and break one of
the watches. Now, if the repeater was the one that was hit, I should
think the man would be bound to pay for it: because he was bound to take
_very special_ care of that, as it was borrowed for his benefit alone.
But if it was the lady's watch, which he had taken only as an
accommodation to me, then he would not be obliged to pay; for, by
hanging it up with his other watches, he took _ordinary_ care of it, and
that was all that he was obliged to take."

"I should think," said James, "that the boy would have to pay, if he
broke the watches."

"Yes," said Rollo's father; "but we have nothing to do with the boy now,
we are only considering the liabilities of the watchmaker."

"And if it had been the lever that was broken," asked Rollo, "what
then?"

"Why, as to the lever," said his father, "he was bound to take _good_
care of it,--something more than mere ordinary care; and I don't know
whether the law would consider hanging watches up at a window as _good_
care or not. It would depend upon that, I suppose. But the watches might
be lost in another way. Suppose the watchmaker had sent the repeater
home to me, and then, at night, had put the lever and the lady's watch
into a small trunk with his other watches, and carried them to his
house, as watchmakers do sometimes. Now suppose that, when he got home,
he put the trunk of watches down in a corner of the room; and suppose
that there was a leak in the roof of his house, so that the water could
come in sometimes when it rained. In the night there comes up a shower,
and the water gets into the trunk, and rusts and spoils the watches. Now
I think it probable that he would not have to pay for the lady's watch,
for he took ordinary care of that,--that is, the same care