"Yes," said Arthur, musingly; "curious too, as literally true." And
he pointed to the boy holding the lamp.

"Edward," he said to the boy, "put back that lamp, and come here and
speak to me."

The boy went quickly and promptly, delighting in little acts of
obedience, as the young do.

When he returned, Arthur said, "Your father says in this letter that
you are to be my son for the future. Will you? are you content to
change?"

"Yes," said the boy, shyly; but he came and leant against his new
father's shoulder where he sat, and, in the pretty demonstrative
manner so natural to unsophisticated children, encircled his arm with
his hands.

Arthur put his arm round the boy's neck, and stroked his hair
caressingly.

"Very well," he said, "then you must always obey me as well as you
did just now; and we will make an Englishman of you, and, what is
more, a good man."

And we sat in silence, looking down the valley. Every now and then an
owl called in his flute-like notes across the thickets, and we heard
the cry of the seabirds from the creek; and the soft wind came gently
up, rustling the fir over our heads, stirring among the leaves of the
tall syringa, and wandering off into the warm dusk.

CHAPTER X

The next day I had to return to London on business, taking leave of
the strange household with some regret. Arthur insisted on driving me
to the station. He talked very brightly of his experiment, and argued
at some length as to how far association could be depended upon as an
element in education; and how to distinguish those natures early that
were loyal to association and those to whom it would be of no
authority.

"I have always divided," he said, "the great influences by which
ordinary people are determined to action into two classes; and I have
connected them with the two staves that the prophet cut, and named
'Beauty and Bands.'

"Some people are worked upon by Beauty--direct influences of good;
they choose a thing because it is fair; they refrain from action
because it is unlovely; they take nothing for granted, but have an
innate fastidious standard which the ugly and painful offend.

"Others are more amenable to Bands--home traditions, domestic
affections: they do not act and refrain from action on a thing's own
merits because it is good or bad; but because some one that they have
loved would have so acted or so refrained from acting--'My mother
would not have done so;' 'Henry would have d