Young Mr. Dunlop passed on horseback along the highway as the man spoke. The stiffest and most formal salutations passed between him and Harry. Henceforth it was evident that there was no more friendship to be looked for there. The builder went home much perplexed, and had his plans prepared only very deliberately. He could not believe that so small an estate as Allenders could afford such an expensive whim as this. And Armstrong shook his head over the fields, bearing still a scanty insufficient crop, and honestly deplored and lamented the daily visits which Harry paid to his lodger, Gilbert Allenders. Gilbert had scarcely the shadow of an excuse, in the way of medical practice, for his residence here; and the universal prejudice which accused him of “leading away” the unfortunate young man of whom everybody was inclined to think well, was not without its foundation. But Harry--poor Harry! he was always “led away”--and it was so easy to find a tempter. A life of coarse dissipation had become, by long practice, the natural breath of Gilbert Allenders; he could not live soberly and quietly as other men did; he felt it necessary to fill every day as it came with its proportion of excitements and pleasures, as he called them; and in a sense very widely apart from the commanded one, he took no thought for the morrow. It pleased him, in some degree, to “lead” Harry “away;” he felt a certain gratification in possessing the power; but though there might lurk at the bottom of his heart a secret grudge against the stranger who had dispossessed him of the inheritance he once reckoned upon, and a secret pleasure in thus avenging himself, it lay far down in the depths, and Gilbert was totally unconscious of its existence. He rather liked Harry on the contrary--liked his society, his wit, and felt his participation in them impart a keener zest to his own recreations. For Gilbert was not a villain, nor ever pursued revenge with purpose or malice; he was only a man of evil habits and impure mind, who felt the burden of his own faults lightened when he could make others partakers in them. And only so far was it true that he led Harry away. The harvest came with its sudden increase of labourers, and flocks of shearers crowded into Harry’s fields; but the poor Highland wanderers and far-travelled Irish lingered about the farm-steading of Allender Mains, and lost days that might have been profitable to them, waiting for the wages which Harry did not know were due.