r that outburst for months afterwards. She was
afraid she had damaged my hearing, as that sense is too often damaged
or destroyed by the blows of ill-tempered parents, teachers, and
nurses.)

Then she turned back and shook Philip as vigorously as she had boxed
me. "I saw you, you spiteful, malicious boy!" said my Aunt Isobel.

All the time she was shaking him, Philip was looking at her feet.
Something that he saw absorbed his attention so fully that he forgot
to cry.

"You're bleeding, Aunt Isobel," said he, when she gave him breath
enough to speak.

The truth was this: the nervous force which Aunt Isobel had summoned
up to catch the hatchet seemed to cease when it was caught; her arm
fell powerless, and the hatchet cut her ankle. That left arm was
useless for many months afterwards, to my abiding reproach.

Philip was not hurt, but he might have been killed. Everybody told me
so often that it was a warning to me to correct my terrible temper,
that I might have revolted against the reiteration if the facts had
been less grave. But I never can feel lightly about that
hatchet-quarrel. It opened a gulf of possible wickedness and life-long
misery, over the brink of which my temper would have dragged me, but
for Aunt Isobel's strong arm and keen eye, and over which it might
succeed in dragging me any day, unless I could cure myself of my
besetting sin.

I never denied it. It was a warning.

CHAPTER III.

WARNINGS--MY AUNT ISOBEL--MR. RAMPANT'S TEMPER, AND HIS CONSCIENCE.

I was not the only scarecrow held up before my own mind.

Nurse had a gallery of historical characters, whom she kept as beacons
to warn our stormy passions of their fate. The hot-tempered boy who
killed his brother when they were at school; the hot-tempered farmer
who took his gun to frighten a trespasser, and ended by shooting him;
the young lady who destroyed the priceless porcelain in a pet; the
hasty young gentleman who kicked his favourite dog and broke its
ribs;--they were all warnings: so was old Mr. Rampant, so was my Aunt
Isobel.

Aunt Isobel's story was a whispered tradition of the nursery for many
years before she and I were so intimate, in consequence of her
goodness and kindness to me, that one day I was bold enough to say to
her, "Aunt Isobel, is it true that the reason why you never married
is because you and he quarrelled, and you were very angry, and he went
away, and he was drowned at sea?"

Child as I was, I do n