“So the thought of them carried you through?”

“God carried me through,” said the child reverently.  “I asked Him not to let me break His Commandment.”

Just then the Colonel’s heavy tread was heard, and with him came Mr. Ogilvie, whom he had met on the road and informed.  The good man was indeed terribly grieved, and his first words were, “Caroline, I cannot tell you how much shocked and concerned I am;” and then he laid his hand on Armine’s shoulder saying—-"My little boy, I am exceedingly sorry for what you have suffered.  One day Robert will be so too.  You have been a noble little fellow, and if anything could console me for the part Robert has played it would be the seeing one of my dear brother’s sons so like his father.”

He gave the downcast brow a fatherly kiss, so really like those of days gone by that the boy’s overstrained spirits gushed forth in sobs and tears, of which he was so much ashamed that he rushed out of the room, leaving his mother greatly overcome, his uncle distressed and annoyed, and his master not much less so, at the revelation of so much evil, so hard either to reach or to understand.

“I would have brought Robert to apologise,” said the Colonel, “if he had been as yet in a mood to do so properly.”

“Oh! that would have been dreadful for us all,” ejaculated Caroline, under her breath.

“But I can make nothing of him,” continued he, “He is perfectly stolid and seems incapable of feeling anything, though I have talked to him as I never thought to have to speak to any son of mine; but he is deaf to all.”

The Colonel, in his wrath, even while addressing only Caroline and Mr. Ogilvie, had raised his voice as if he were shouting words of command, so that both shrank a little, and Carey said—-

“I don’t think he knew it was so bad.”

“What?  Cheating his masters and torturing a helpless child for not yielding to his tyranny?”

“People don’t always give things their right names even to themselves,” said Mr. Ogilvie.  “I should try to see it from the boy’s point of view.”

“I have no notion of extenuating ill-conduct or making excuses!  That’s the modern way!  So principles get lowered!  I tell you, sir, there are excuses for everything.  What makes the difference is only the listening to them or not.”

“Yes,” ventured Caroline, “but is there not a difference between finding excuses for oneself and for other people?”

“All alike, lowering the principle,” said the Colonel, with something of the same slowness of comprehension as his son.  “If excuses are to be made for everything, I don’t wonder that there is no teaching one’s boys truth or common honesty and humanity.”

“But, Robert,” said Caroline, roused to defence; “do you really mean that in your time nobody bullied or cribbed?”

“There was some shame about it if they did,” said the Colonel.  “Now, I suppose, I am to be told that it is an ordinary custom to be connived at.”