But the earl was mistaken, as Helen knew. His love-victory had been in something deeper than toys and "goodies." Even when their charm began to cease Boy still crept up to the little chair, and looked from the empty footboard up to the loving face, which no one, man, woman, or child, ever regarded without something far higher than pity. And, by degrees, Boy, or "Carr"--which, as being the diminutive for his second Christian name, Cardross, he was often called now--found a new attraction in his friend. He would listen with wide-open eyes, and attention that never flagged, to the interminable "tories" which the earl told him, out of the same brilliant imagination which had once used to delight his uncles in the boat. And so, little by little, the child and the man grew to be "a pair of friends"--familiar and fond, but with a certain tender reverence always between them, which had the most salutary effect on the younger. Whenever he was sick, or sorry, or naughty--and Master "Boy" could be exceedingly naughty sometimes--the voice which had most influence over him, the influence to which he always succumbed, came from the little wheeled chair. No anger did he ever find there--no dark looks or sharp tones--but he found steady, unbending authority; the firm will which never passed over a single fault, or yielded to a single whim. In his wildest passions of grief or wrath, it was only necessary to say to the child, "If the earl could see you!" to make him pause; and many and many a time, whenever motherly authority, which in this case was weakened by occasional over-indulgence and by an almost morbid terror of the results of the same, failed to conquer the child, Helen used, as a last resource, to bring him in her arms, set him down beside Lord Cairnforth, and leave him there. She never came back but she found Boy "good". "He makes me good, too, I think," the earl would say now and then, "for he makes me happy." It was true. Lord Cairnforth never looked otherwise than happy when he had beside him that little blossom of hope of the new generation-- Helen's child. As years went by, though he still lived alone at the Castle, it was by no means the secluded life of his youth and early manhood. He gradually gathered about him neighbors and friends. He filled his house occasionally with guests, of his own rank and of all ranks; people notable and worthy to be known. He became a "patron," as they called it in those days, of art and literature, and assembled around him all who, for his pleasure and their own benefit, chose to enjoy his hospitality.