hand, let it go again, but continued standing by his side.

"Do you know, my little friends," said the stranger, "that it is my
business in life to instruct such little people as you?"

"Do they obey you well, sir?" asked Ned, perhaps conscious of a want of
force in the person whom he addressed.

The stranger smiled faintly. "Not too well," said he. "That has been my
difficulty; for I have moral and religious objections, and also a great
horror, to the use of the rod, and I have not been gifted with a harsh
voice and a stern brow; so that, after a while, my little people
sometimes get the better of me. The present generation of men is too
gross for gentle treatment."

"You are quite right," quoth Doctor Grimshawe, who had been observing
this little scene, and trying to make out, from the mutual deportment
of the stranger and the two children, what sort of man this fair, quiet
stranger was, with his gentleness and weakness,--characteristics that
were not attractive to himself, yet in which he acknowledged, as he saw
them here, a certain charm; nor did he know, scarcely, whether to
despise the one in whom he saw them, or to yield to a strange sense of
reverence. So he watched the children, with an indistinct idea of being
guided by them. "You are quite right: the world now--and always before,
as far as I ever heard--requires a great deal of brute force, a great
deal of animal food and brandy in the man that is to make an impression
on it."

The convalescence of the stranger--he gave his name as Colcord--
proceeded favorably; for the Doctor remarked that, delicate as his