good man--a
religious man--perhaps a little severe; and with this thought a dark streak
fell across my sky.

A cruel disciplinarian! had I not read of such characters?--lock and
key, bread and water, and solitude! To sit locked up all night in a dark
out-of-the-way room, in a great, ghosty, old-fashioned house, with no one
nearer than the other wing. What years of horror in one such night! Would
not this explain my poor father's hesitation, and my cousin Monica's
apparently disproportioned opposition? When an idea of terror presents
itself to a young person's mind, it transfixes and fills the vision,
without respect of probabilities or reason.

My uncle was now a terrible old martinet, with long Bible lessons,
lectures, pages of catechism, sermons to be conned by rote, and an awful
catalogue of punishments for idleness, and what would seem to him impiety.
I was going, then, to a frightful isolated reformatory, where for the first
time in my life I should be subjected to a rigorous and perhaps barbarous
discipline.

All this was an exhalation of fancy, but it quite overcame me. I threw
myself, in my solitude, on the floor, upon my knees, and prayed for
deliverance--prayed that Cousin Monica might prevail with Doctor Bryerly,
and both on my behalf with the Lord Chancellor, or the High Sheriff, or
whoever else my proper deliverer might be; and when my cousin returned, she
found me quite in an agony.

'Why, you little fool! what fancy has taken possession of you now?' she
cried.

And when my new terror came to light, she actually laughed a little to
reassure me, and she said--

'My dear child, your uncle Silas will never put you through your duty to
your neighbour; all the time you are under his roof you'll have idleness
and liberty enough, and too much, I fear. It is neglect, my dear, not
discipline, that I'm afraid of.'

'I think, dear Cousin Monica, you are afraid of something more than
neglect,' I said, relieved, however.

'I _am_ afraid of more than neglect,' she replied promptly; 'but I hope my
fears may turn out illusory, and that possibly they may be avoided. And
now, for a few hours at least, let us think of something else. I rather
like that Doctor Bryerly. I could not get him to say what I wanted. I don't
think he's Scotch, but he is very cautious, and I am sure, though he would
not say so, that he thinks of the matter exactly as I do. He says that
those fine people, who are named as his co-trustees, w