And landlords and farmers, startled too, are looking more scrupulously to themselves, lest they be outdone by the newcomer; the blood stirs in the awakened veins of the country side, and something of emulation, keener than the keenest air of December, strikes into the warm fireside corner, where honest men can no longer take in peace their afternoon’s glass of toddy, and its accompanying newspaper, for constant reports of what is doing at Allenders, and what Allenders himself is doing--for Harry’s active footstep rings along the frost-bound paths, and Harry’s frank salutations scatter good-will among his husbandmen every day; and steady-going agricultural people waken up, and look after their own omissions and neglects, with a half-grudge at Allenders. It seems that Harry has found at last the life suitable for him. Though the snow lies heavy on the sullen brow of Demeyet, and every blade of grass on the lawn is crisped into distinct identity, and the burn is frost-bound under the trees, and an icy hand restrains the tinkling springlet of the Lady’s Well, Harry never fails to visit his fields. “The best compost for the lands Is the master’s feet and hands,” he says with a laugh, as he wraps his plaid about him, and sets out in the face of the keenest wind that sweeps out of the highlands; and Agnes, with the new baby on her arm, sits by the fireside with radiant smiles, and Martha looks after him from the window, where now the jasmine clings in long brown fibres to the wall, without a single adorning leaf, and in her heart tries to forget all the dread and all the bitter thoughts which mingled in the summer-time with the sickly odour of those jasmine flowers. Yet sometimes Harry is abstracted and full of care. They believe that he is thinking then of errors which they believe are now happily past for ever; for no one in the house but Martha, ever remembers, that all these improvements must cost more than Miss Jean’s thousand pounds--and Martha finds all her attempts at inquiry evaded. She never can succeed in learning where Harry gets the means of accomplishing so much, and it is only now and then, when an incautious murmur about interest or legal charges, reaches her, that she has ground for her conjecture that he has borrowed from others besides Miss Jean. But Martha believes with trembling that Harry’s mind is changed--that his purposes are no longer fluctuating and unsteady--that he has reached at last the great strength and motive power of the Christian life; and she can trust all lesser things to the regulation of that which is above all.