“It is strange to me to hear this of my poor Jock,” said Caroline, “always my pickle and scapegrace, though he is a dear good-hearted boy.  His uncle says it is that he wants a strong hand, but don’t you think an uncle’s strong hand is much worse than any mother’s weakness?”

“Not than her weakness,” said Mrs. Evelyn.  “It is her love, I think, that you mean.  There are some boys with whom strong hands are vain, but who will guide themselves for love, and that we mothers are surely the ones to infuse.”

“My boys are affectionate enough, dear fellows,” said Caroline proudly, forgetting her sore disappointment that neither Allen nor Robert had chosen to come to her help.

“I did not only mean love of oneself,” said Mrs. Evelyn, gently.  “I was thinking of the fine gold we heard of this morning.  When our boys once have found that secret, the chief of our work is done.”

“Ah! and I never understood how to give them that,” said Caroline.  “We have been all astray ever since their father left us.”

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Evelyn, with a certain sweet shyness, “I can’t help thinking that your dear Lucas found that gold among the stones of the moraine, and will help my poor weak Cecil to keep a fast hold of it.”

Mrs. Evelyn’s opinion was confirmed, when a few days later came the answer to Jock’s letter to his tutor, pleasing and touching both friends so much that each showed it to his mother.  Another important piece of intelligence came in a letter from John to his cousin, namely that the present Captain of the house, with two or three more “fellows,” were leaving Eton at the Midsummer holidays, and that his tutor had been talking to him about becoming Captain.

Jock and Cecil greatly rejoiced, for the departing Captain had been a youth whose incapacity for government had been much better known to his subordinates than to his master, and the other two had been the special tempters and evil geniuses of the house, those who above all had set themselves to make obedience and religion seem contemptible, and vice daring and manly.

“I should have hated the notion of being Captain,” wrote John, “if those impracticable fellows had stayed on, and if I did not feel sure of you and Evelyn.  You are such a fellow for getting hold of the others, but with you two at my back, I really think the house may get a different tone into it.”

“And every one told us what an excellent character it had,” said Mrs. Evelyn, when the letter, through a chain of strict confidence, came round to her, the boys little knowing how much it did to decide their continuance together, and at Eton.  Sir James had never been willing that Cecil should be taken away, and he had become as sensible as any of the rest to the Brownlow charm.