The infection spread to more than Horace when Harry came into Friarton Town, in the fancy dress which he had taken into his head to wear, whistling or singing aloud in his fine baritone, though the song was of no higher musical or intellectual calibre than ‘The Two Obadiahs,’ with sheer lightness of heart and gleefulness of spirit, the very pessimists, in the habit of finding the foundations of the world out of joint, and holding life to be stale, flat, and unprofitable, were won to smile, as well as to sigh. Harry Stanhope was such a goodly spectacle in the flush of his youth and strength and exuberant spirits, if one could but forget that there came a term to these magnificent animal gifts, and a just reckoning for the days of their triumph. After all, the recollection only lent a wistful charm to all that was fleeting in Harry’s glory. It was not merely those who were closest to his own class—the Wrights, Fremantles, and the vicar’s family—who delighted in Harry and conspired to spoil him as the finest young fellow in the world, perfectly charming, so delightfully natural, frank and unpretending, so imperturbably good-natured in accommodating himself to the difference in his position—though, to be sure, he could not forfeit his birthright. It was not merely Fan Constable who beamed on Harry as on a gay and gallant deliverer from the social depths into which Oliver’s extraordinary recantation had consigned them afresh. At the same time, Fan alone saw meeting in Harry, in the strangest, most fascinating manner, both the confirmation and the contradiction of all her early predilections and aspirations, until, in mingled conviction and reaction, she was ready to honour gentle breeding more than ever; while she became in a way reconciled to Oliver’s flight, which appeared to coincide with Harry Stanhope’s course. She began to feel dubious whether Oliver were so entirely wrong as she had supposed, whether he were not following, without guessing it, a veritably noble and knightly impulse in his raid against modern trade dragons, and his search for the San Graal in the homeliest quarters. That dim undefined notion, whether true or false, did much to restore Fan’s equanimity and cheerfulness. What did it matter if the Wrights and Fremantles, who were so frightened for hazarding their own debatable footing, turned their backs, when Harry Stanhope lent the Constables the far greater weight of his support, and constantly directed upon them his laughing face, coming to Friarton Mill ten times oftener and on twenty times more friendly terms, than Oliver with his contradictory spirit authorised?