Horace was sickly, sallow and stunted, with a good deal of the captious testiness and jealous moroseness which are said to distinguish unfavourably the mass of the victims of deafness from the bulk of their fellow-sufferers from blindness. Horace Stanhope was as hard as Harry was easy to get on with, and if left to himself would have held aloof from his fellow-creatures as sedulously as Harry cast himself with a disarming confidence on their sympathy. The single exception Horace made was in favour of his brother, between whom and himself there had existed a strong attachment—cemented by the curious attraction of extremes—since the two young men were babies. Harry saved his brother from utter isolation. The silent saturnine lad, shut out by one of the chief doors of the senses from joining in much of human effort and enjoyment, whether ‘at kirk or market’ or by friends’ hearths, transferred his active share in the struggle of life and in its joys and sorrows to his brother, and vested and centred in Harry the main part of Horace’s ambition, pleasure, and pain, apart from what was purely physical. He elected to live as it were vicariously, to take his experience by proxy. In accordance with this choice, wherever Harry went, Horace followed at his heels. Harry’s friends—and he was pre-eminently a young man of many comrades—making them for good or for evil wherever he went, Horace immediately adopted—although they might be as unlike him as he was unlike Harry—in Horace’s silent, rather cantankerous fashion, which caused his friendship to prove somewhat of an infliction to Harry’s congenial associates. Whenever Horace shook off the heavy fetters of his infirmity, and, instead of being doggedly indifferent, showed himself alert and interested, one might be sure it was in something that concerned Harry. The dedication of Horace’s blighted life was made mutely even with regard to himself, for his was a nature as shy and reticent as it was tenacious. And it was an undreamt of mystery to Harry’s transparent, unreflective disposition. Harry had only an instinctive sense that poor old Horry would be lost without him—Harry. Why, his was the only voice which, while still pitched in a natural key, Horry could distinguish without difficulty—and did not that point plainly to the conclusion, insisted the sapient Harry, that the two were meant to hang out together? No, no, a wife, though she were ten times a beauty and an heiress, could not induce him to cut the connection. And the advantage was not all on one side, Harry went on to argue—for he was generous in his youthful flush of manliness—he himself was like one of those little fellows who are put out in repeating their lessons, if the youngsters have not a pet button to finger. Now, Horry was his button. Harry was convinced he could not get a single inning at cricket, or play billiards save like a muff—horrible misadventure!—if he did not have Horry to look out, or mark for him.