‘Which is a poor spirit after all,’ said my mother; ’but the child is not in the army.’

‘And it is well for him that he is not,’ said my father; ’but you do not talk wisely, the world is a field of battle, and he who leaves the ranks, what can he expect but to be cut down?  I call his present behaviour leaving the ranks, and going vapouring about without orders; his only chance lies in falling in again as quick as possible; does he think he can carry the day by himself? an opinion of his own at these years—­I confess I am exceedingly uneasy about the lad.’

‘You make me uneasy too,’ said my mother; ’but I really think you are too hard upon the child; he is not a bad child, after all, though not, perhaps, all you could wish him; he is always ready to read the Bible.  Let us go in; he is in the room above us; at least he was two hours ago, I left him there bending over his books; I wonder what he has been doing all this time, it is now getting late; let us go in, and he shall read to us.’

‘I am getting old,’ said my father; ’and I love to hear the Bible read to me, for my own sight is something dim; yet I do not wish the child to read to me this night, I cannot so soon forget what I have heard; but I hear my eldest son’s voice, he is now entering the gate; he shall read the Bible to us this night.  What say you?’

CHAPTER XXI

The eldest son—­Saying of wild Finland—­The critical time—­Vaunting polls—­One thing wanted—­A father’s blessing—­Miracle of art—­The Pope’s house—­Young enthusiast—­Pictures of England—­Persist and wrestle—­The little dark man.

The eldest son!  The regard and affection which my father entertained for his first-born were natural enough, and appeared to none more so than myself, who cherished the same feelings towards him.  What he was as a boy the reader already knows, for the reader has seen him as a boy; fain would I describe him at the time of which I am now speaking, when he had attained the verge of manhood, but the pen fails me, and I attempt not the task; and yet it ought to be an easy one, for how frequently does his form visit my mind’s eye in slumber and in wakefulness, in the light of day and in the night watches; but last night I saw him in his beauty and his strength; he was about to speak, and my ear was on the stretch, when at once I awoke, and there was I alone, and the night storm was howling amidst the branches of the pines which surround my lonely dwelling:  ’Listen to the moaning of the pine, at whose root thy hut is fastened,’—­a saying that, of wild Finland, in which there is wisdom; I listened and thought of life and death. . . .  Of all human beings that I have ever known, that elder brother was the most frank and generous, ay, and the quickest and readiest, and the best adapted to do a great thing needful at the critical time, when the delay of a moment would be fatal.  I have known him dash