He told me that if ever
I came here I was to mind and do his work."
"What kind of work?" I asked, anxiously.
"Doing what he meant to have done," returned Harold, "for the poor.
He said I should find out about it."
"You must have been too young to understand much of what he meant
then," I said. "Did he not regret anything?"
"Yes, he said he had begun at the wrong end, when they were not ripe
for it, and that the failure had ruined him for trying again."
"Then he did see things differently at last?" I said, hoping to find
that the sentiments I had always heard condemned had not been
perpetuated.
"Oh yes!" cried Eustace. "They were just brutes, you know, that
nobody could do any good to, and were only bent on destroying, and
had no gratitude nor sense; and that was the ruin of him and of my
father too."
"They were ignorant, and easily maddened," said Harold, gravely.
"He did not know how little they could be controlled. I must find
out the true state of things. Prometesky said I must read it up."
"Prometesky!" I cried in despair. "Oh, Harold, you have not been
influenced by that old firebrand?"
"He taught me almost all I know," was the answer, still much to my
dismay; but I showed Harold to the library, and directed him to some
old books of my father's, which I fancied might enlighten him on the
subjects on which he needed information, though I feared they might
be rather out of date; and whenever he was not out of doors, he was
reading them, sometimes running his fingers through his yellow hair,
or pulling his beard, and growling to himself when he was puzzled or
met with what he did not like.
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