Oliver reached the carved gallery at last; and leant over the balustrade looking down on the water of the Brook and away over the woody undulating ground of Copley Grange Park, where the sombre green thorns were covered with dark crimson haws, and no note of a bird broke the stillness, which was only made alive by the monotonous babbling of the Brook. How vividly some of the more significant scenes of his life, since he attained manhood, rose before him there! The thorns were red and white again in flower, and the thrush was once more singing, as he broke to Fan his life-purpose, and combated her objections. How full of confidence he had been! With what high hopes and steadfast resolves he had entered on his mission, and it had come to nothing! He had been foiled on every side, till at last he was allowing himself to drift out of the struggle. He was watching the ducks eating the mulberries, and turning his back, in vain, on a stalwart young figure cumbered with a limber attendant, belonging, by rights, to Oliver’s gone-by ’Varsity days, and yet starting up, stepping out there through the park, and hailing him on his threshold, in spite of him. He was walking with Fan in her garden, listening to her unwonted chatter and warm admiration of these new friends. The master baker was jostled, tripped up, and thrown down afresh by his late journeyman in the twilight lane yonder. Oliver was cut dead anew by Catherine Hilliard in the High Street of Friarton. The frost was on the ground while Harry Stanhope was besieging Oliver’s bedroom door to announce his intentions; and presently the brother was facing the sister on the hearthrug, holding her back from her fate. Oliver was grasping Fan’s hands and pledging himself the devil should not have Harry. Oliver was binding himself to give up any grain which he might have gathered from the crop which had cost him so dear, that he might help her to lie on the bed which she had made for herself. Yet Harry’s deliverance had proved harder to effect than that of Tam Lane in the ballad. It had been beyond the power either of strong man or devoted woman, though it was just possible, after Fan’s dead hands dropped the task, it might be performed by baby fingers in God’s great way of nature.