As soon as breakfast was over the whole family set out for a walk. Mr. Raymount seldom left the house till after lunch, but even he, who cared comparatively little for the open air, had grown eager for it. Streets, hills and the sandy beaches were swarming with human beings—all drawn out by the sun.

Mrs. Raymount saw her son, now cheerful from the change of weather, and looked upon him as good. She was one of the best of women herself—her lamp was sure to have oil in it. Yet ever since he first lay in her arms, I doubt if she had ever done anything to help the youth conquer himself. Now it was too late, even if she had known what could be done. The others had so far turned out well. Why should not this one also? The moment his surly disposition was temporarily over, she looked upon him as reformed. And when he spoke worldliness, she persuaded herself he was jesting. But, alas, she had no adequate notion—not even the shadow of an idea—of the selfishness of the man-child she had given to the world.

This matter of the black sheep in the white flock is one of the most mysterious facts of spiritual generation.

Sometimes, however, the sheep is by no means so black as the whiter ones—who perhaps think themselves whiter than they are—think. But on the other hand, he may be a great deal worse than some of his own family think him.

His father had just as little notion that Cornelius was a black sheep. He was not what the world would have called a black sheep, but his father, could he have seen into him, would have counted him a very black sheep indeed—and none the whiter that he recognized in the blackness certain shades that were of paternal origin. It was only to the rest of the family that Cornelius showed his true self. He was afraid of his father, and that father, being proud of his children, would have found it hard to believe anything bad of them—like his faults, they were his own! His faith in his children was in no small measure conceit of that which was his, and blinded him to their faults as it blinded him to some of his own. The discovery of any serious fault in one of them would be a sore wound to his vanity.

It never entered Mr. Raymount’s mind that any member of his family might think differently than he did about anything. But both his wife and Hester were able to think, and did think for themselves, and there were considerable differences in the paths in which they walked from those he had trod. He supposed that both they and Cornelius read what he wrote and agreed with all of it. And while his wife and daughter did read most of it, his son read next to nothing of it, and what he did read, he read in silent contempt. The bond between the father and son was by no means so strong as the father thought. Indeed, because of Mr. Raymount’s intentions regarding the division of his property, his son looked upon him as his enemy. And selfishness rarely fails of good arguments. Nor can anything destroy it but such a turning of things upside down as only he that made them can work.