child's birth the struggle might have been too hard; for mothers have responsibilities as well as wives, and when these conflict, as they do sometimes, God help her who has to choose between them! But Helen was saved this misfortune. Providence had taken her destiny out of her own hands, and here she was, free as Helen Cardross of old-in exactly the same position, and going through the same simple round of daily cares and daily avocations which she had done as the minister's active and helpful daughter.

For as nothing else but the minister's daughter would she, for the present, be recognised at Cairnforth. Lord Cairnforth's

intentions, towards herself or her son

she insisted on keeping wholly secret except, of course, as regarded that dear and good father.

"I may die," she said to the Earl,

"die before yourself; and if my boy grows up you may not love him, or he may not deserve your love, in which case you must choose another heir. No, you shall be bound in no way externally; let all go on as heretofore. I will have it so."

And of all Lord Cairnforth's generosity she would accept nothing for herselfexcept a small annual sum, which, with her widow's pension from the East India Company, sufficed to make her independent

of her father: but she did not refuse kindness to her boy.

Never was there such a boy.

"Boy"

he was called from the first, never

66

baby;" there was nothing of the baby

about him. Before he was

a year old he ruled his mother, grandfather, and Uncle Duncan with a rod of iron. Nay,

"Miss

the whole village were his slaves. Helen's bairn" bairn" was a little king everywhere. It might have gone rather hard for the poor wee fellow, thus, allegorically,

66

'Wearing on his baby brow the round And top of sovereignty:"

that dangerous sovereignty for any child

-any human being-to wield, had there

not been at least one

person who was

able to assume authority over him.

From his earliest babyhood Boy had been accustomed to the sight of the motionless figure in the moving chairwho never touched him, but always spoke so kindly and looked round so smilingly; whom, he could perceive-for children are quicker to notice things than we sometimes think his mother and grandfather invariably welcomed welcomed with such such exceeding pleasure, and treated with never-failing

respect and tenderness.

And, as soon as

he could crawl, the foot-board of the

mysterious wheeled chair became to the

little man a perfect treasure-house

delight.

VOL. II.

of

Hidden there he found toys,

L

picture-books,

"sweeties " gifts such as

he got nowhere else, and for which, before appropriating them, he was carefully taught to express thanks in his Own infantile way, and made to understand fully from whom they came.

"It's bribery, and against my principles," the Earl would sometimes say, half sadly. "But if I did not give him things, how else could Boy learn to

love me?"

Helen never answered this no more than she used to answer many similar speeches in the Earl's childhood. She knew time would prove them all to be

wrong.

What sort of idea the child really

had of this wonderful donor the source