ght the Lord's
fight even unto the death. The shops were closed and the factories
shut that day in the parish, yet no master stopped the day's wages;
but for many a year afterward the towns-folk felt the want of that
brave, hopeful, loving parson, and his wife, who had lived to teach
them mutual forbearance and helpfulness, and had _almost_ at last
given them a glimpse of what this old world would be, if people would
live for God and each other, instead of for themselves.

What has all this to do with our story? Well, my dear boys, let a
fellow go on in his own way, or you won't get anything out of him
worth having. I must show you what sort of a man it was who had
brought up little Arthur, or else you won't believe in him, which
I am resolved you shall do; and you won't see how he, the timid,
weak boy, had points in him from which the bravest and strongest
recoiled, and made his presence and example felt from the first on
all sides, unconsciously to himself, and without the least attempt at
proselytizing.[18] The spirit of his father was in him, and the Friend
to which his father had left him did not neglect the trust.

[18] #Proselytizing#: converting to one's particular opinions.

RESULTS OF LESSON NO. 2.

After supper that night, and almost nightly for years afterwards, Tom
and Arthur, and by degrees East occasionally, and sometimes one,
sometimes another of their friends, read a chapter of the Bible
together, and talked it over afterwards. Tom was at first utterly
astonished, and almost shocked, at the sort of way in which Arthur
read the book, and talked about the men and women whose lives were
there told. The first night they happened to fall on the chapters
about the famine in Egypt,[19] and Arthur began talking about
Joseph[20] as if he were a living statesman; just as he might have
talked about Lord Grey and the Reform Bill;[21] only that they were
much more living realities to him. The book was to him, Tom saw, the
most vivid and delightful history of real people, who might do right
or wrong, just like any one who was walking about in Rugby,--the
Doctor, or the masters, or the sixth-form boys. But the astonishment
soon passed off, the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and the book
became at once and forever to him the great human and divine book, and
the men and women, whom he had looked upon as something quite
different from himself, became his friends and counsellors.

[19] See Genesis xl