He who does so will come by degrees to have no will of his own, and act only from impulse--which may be the will of a devil.

So Donal and Davie grew together into one heart of friendship.
Donal never longed for his hours with Davie to pass, and Davie was never so happy as when with Donal.

The one was gently leading the other into the paths of liberty.

Nothing but the teaching of him who made the human soul can make that soul free, but it is in great measure through those who have already learned that he teaches; and Davie was an apt pupil, promising to need less of the discipline of failure and pain that he was strong to believe, and ready to obey.
But Donal was not all the day with Davie, and latterly had begun to feel a little anxious about the time the boy spent away from him--partly with his brother, partly with the people about the stable, and partly with his father, who evidently found the presence of his younger son less irksome to him than that of any other person, and saw more of him than of Forgue: the amount of loneliness the earl could endure was amazing.

But after what he had seen and heard, Donal was most anxious concerning his time with his father, only he felt it a delicate thing to ask him about it.