"This was perhaps the first time in Bernard's life in which he ever had any really useful thoughts. He was made then to have some little notion that he owed his present trouble to his having been a very
rebellious naughty boy; but with this good thought came also a bad one: 'But if papa loves me as he ought to do, he would not have been so cruel as to leave me. He would have forgiven me and overlooked the past, and tried me again.'
"Bernard did not consider that it would actually have
been very dangerous to have taken a disobedient boy to sea, for no one could tell what mischief he might have got into on board ship.
"When Bernard saw the carriage again, it looked like a speck on the white road. The speck seemed to grow smaller and smaller, and at last it disappeared round the foot of the little hill. Then the poor boy cried and cried again, until he could cry no longer, and every tear seemed to be dried up.
"No one can say how long he sat there, but it was a long time; at last he heard a voice, saying, 'Master Low! Master Low! where are you?' and the next minute old Jacob, the gardener, appeared.
"Now Jacob was the only servant who had not helped to spoil Bernard, and therefore Bernard had never liked him, but always called him cross old Jacob. He was glad, however, to see him then; and yet he did not speak first to him.
"'I am glad I have found you, Master,' said the old man; 'I have been hunting you everywhere; and so has Mr. Evans. They be all come—Miss Grizzy herself, and the two maids, and Master Stephen, and a power of traps; and the lad that cleans the shoes and knives. But I shan't let him meddle with the horses, which he is forward enough to do. But you must come along with me. Master; they are all in trouble about you.'
"'Surely,' said Bernard, forgetting that one good thought which he had had a little before, 'I may go anywhere I please on my own papa's grounds; everything here is papa's, Jacob, and I am at home here.'
"'True,' replied Jacob, 'and so am I too; but neither you nor I is master here.'