“Better.  She has recovered from her faintness,” replied Mr. Howland.

The door opened while he was yet speaking, and Mrs. Howland came in, looking pale and agitated.  The physician raised his finger to enjoin prudence, and then turning to Andrew said, in a cheerful voice,

“Here is your mother, my boy.”

Mrs. Howland came quickly to the bedside.  As she bent over to kiss the white-faced sufferer, the child sobbed out—­

“Oh mother!—­dear mother!”

The mother’s frame quivered under the pressure of intense feeling, and she was on the eve of losing all self-control, when the physician whispered in her ear.

“Be calm, madam—­the life of your child may depend on it!”

Instantly the mother was calm in all that met the eye.  Close to her child she bent, and with a hand laid gently on his clammy forehead, she spoke to him words of comfort and encouragement, while the physician proceeded in the work of bandaging his broken and injured limbs.

As for Mr. Howland, he walked the floor with compressed and silent lips, until the physician’s work was done.  He pitied the suffering boy, yet there was nothing of what he called weakness in his pity.  The idea that Andrew was suffering a just retribution for his wrong conduct, was distinctly present to his mind.  And he even went so far as to put up a prayer that the pain he was enduring, and must for a long time endure, might work in him a salutary change—­might lead to his reformation.

In due time the poor boy was made as comfortable as the nature of his injuries would permit, and quiet and order restored to the agitated family.

“You see, my son, that punishment always follows evil conduct.”  These were the first words spoken by Mr. Howland to his suffering boy, as soon as he found himself alone with him.  And then he lectured him on disobedience until the poor child grew faint.

CHAPTER V.

The boy recovered, in due time, from his injuries, but there was no manifest change in his character, nor was there any relaxing of the iron hand of authority with which his father sought to hold him back from evil.  It is no matter of wonder that he grew hardened and reckless as he grew older; nor that, to avoid punishment, he sought refuge in lying, secretiveness, and deceit.

The other children—­there were three beside Andrew—­being different in character, were more easily subdued under the imperious will of their father, whom they feared more than they loved.  Assuming, in his own mind, that Andrew’s will had been permitted to gain strength ere an effort had been made to control it, Mr. Howland resolved not to fall into this error in the case of the children who followed; and, assuredly, he did not.  Through the rigors of unfailing punishment for every act of wrong-doing, they were forced into the way he would have them go, and though rebellion was often in their hearts, it was rare, indeed, that it found its way into act, except when there was the utmost certainty that their misconduct would not be found out.  Thus they learned to act hypocritically toward their father, and to regard him as one who marred, instead of promoting their pleasure.