The operation was repeated on the two following nights; and Daniel would have kept up his son two hours later than his regular time of rest to continue it on the third if the evening had not set in with clouds and rain. In spite of the patient's belief that the warts would waste away and were wasting, (for Prince Hohenlohe could not require more entire faith than was given on this occasion) no alteration could be perceived in them at a fortnight's end. Daniel thought the experiment had failed because it had not been repeated sufficiently often, nor perhaps continued long enough. But the Schoolmaster was of opinion that the cause of failure was in the basin: for that silver being the lunar metal would by affinity assist the influential virtues of the moonlight, which finding no such affinity in a mixed metal of baser compounds, might contrariwise have its potential qualities weakened, or even destroyed when received in a brasen vessel, and reflected from it. Flossofer Daniel assented to this theory. Nevertheless as the child got rid of his troublesome excrescences in the course of three or four months, all parties disregarding the lapse of time at first, and afterwards fairly forgetting it, agreed that the remedy had been effectual, and Sir Kenelm if he had been living, might have procured the solemn attestation of men more veracious than himself that moonshine was an infallible cure for warts. CHAPTER VIII. P. I. A KIND SCHOOLMASTER AND A HAPPY SCHOOL BOY. Though happily thou wilt say that wands be to be wrought when they are green, lest they rather break than bend when they be dry, yet know also that he that bendeth a twig because he would see if it would bow by strength may chance to have a crooked tree when he would have a straight. EUPHUES. From this time the two Flossofers were friends. Daniel seldom went to Ingleton without looking in upon Guy, if it were between school hours. Guy on his part would walk as far with him on the way back, as the tether of his own time allowed, and frequently on Saturdays and Sundays he strolled out and took a seat by Daniel's fire side. Even the wearying occupation of hearing one generation of urchins after another repeat _a-b-ab_, hammering the first rules of arithmetic into leaden heads, and pacing like a horse in a mill the same dull dragging round day after day, had neither diminished Guy's good-nature, nor lessened his love for children. He had from the first conceived a liking for young Daniel, both because of the right principle which was evinced by the manner in which he proposed the question concerning stealing the beans, and of the profound gravity (worthy of a Flossofer's son) with which he behaved in the affair of the moonshine. All that he saw and heard of him tended to confirm this favourable prepossession; and the boy, who had been taught to read in the Bible and in Stowe's Chronicle, was committed to his tuition at seven years of age.