"You may do as you please about the matter," returned Mrs. Hazeley, and there the matter dropped.
They continued their work in silence, their thoughts as busy as their fingers.
CHAPTER XII.
LED AWAY.
AND what had become of Harry Hazeley in all this time? Let us go back a little.
Probably all would have gone well with the lad, who was beginning to see a new life stretching out before him under the sunny influence of his sister, had his father lived.
While Mr. Hazeley exercised but little restraining power over his son during his life, the fact that he had a father had considerable influence over Harry. When Mr. Hazeley was killed, Harry realized that he was thrown on his own resources, and the fact that he was subject to no higher authority, took a firm hold upon him. At first, the idea aroused in him an innate, but undeveloped manliness, and he determined to stand by his mother and sister, and be a comfort to them as well as a support.
But the inherent weakness in his character soon gained the supremacy, and for the time over-ruled all his resolutions, which had been made in his own strength.
It was inevitable that he should mingle with his companions in work, and soon they gained an influence over him that was not for his highest good. Being somewhat older than he himself was, they instilled into him a false idea of their superiority, and it was by this means they retained him in their "set"—a set of wild, dissipated young men.
Where was his judgment? Alas! he had inherited sufficient of his mother's weak disposition to over-rule it, and consequently, he was one of the kind most easily deceived and led.