When Bolton's friends next heard of him, he was living in a remote district of H---- shire, on an income necessarily very small; for it could have been scarcely more than the proceeds of his curacy; and curacies in that part of the country were then but a wretched provision for any man--especially for one accustomed as he had been to good living and good society. However, he was not much troubled with the latter in his present position; not to speak of the fact that his nearest conversible neighbour lived seven miles off. Wherever parsons are mostly poor, and many of them ill-educated, they are not thought much of, either by farmers or gentlemen. And as it did not suit Harry's tastes to enjoy his pipe and pot in the society of the first, as his predecessor had done with much contentment, nor yet to wait for the arrival of the one landed proprietor in the parish before he commenced the morning service, he was voted by the overseers and churchwardens to be "mighty set up," and by the squire to be "a d---- d unmannerly fellow." Both indeed soon found out that they were wrong; and the farmers had the grace to confess it, and came, in course of time, to believe it possible for a curate to be a gentleman without being proud, and that it was at least as well for him to be visiting the sick and poor, and overlooking the parish school, and able to give a little good advice to themselves in matters of difficulty, as to be boozing in their company at the Crown and Thistle. And, in course of time, those rough but honest people came to respect him almost as much perhaps, in their way, as his more enlightened neighbours had done in his former position. It must have been a great change, however, to a man like Bolton, used to good society, fond of it, and readily welcomed in it, as he had always been. No doubt he felt it; yet he declared that, after the first few weeks, he never was happier in his life. His gun was given up, as an indulgence too expensive, but there was excellent trout fishing for miles on both sides of his cottage; and, though a sport to which he had no great liking in his earlier days, he now took to it vigorously as the only amusement at hand, and became no unworthy disciple of honest Isaac. The worst effect of this new life of isolation was, that he became somewhat negligent in his habits; took to smoking a great deal, and made his tobacconist's account a good deal longer than his tailor's. He had still many old friends and connections at a distance, with whom he might have spent half the year if he had pleased; but, in his first pique with the world in general, he had fixed himself purposely as far out of their reach as possible; travelling was expensive (railways as yet were not); assistance in his clerical duties was not easily obtained; and so, partly from choice, and partly from necessity, his new life became one of almost utter isolation.