Would Oliver, with his present knowledge, do all he had done over again, if the choice were once more given him? He thought it over deliberately and as calmly as he could, in trying to form his plans for the future, and he honestly believed he would. He solemnly thanked God for the boon of such a belief, to soften the soreness of his disappointment and defeat, and still the ache of his heart. The consciousness confirmed his faith that there had been some good in his aims. They had not owed their origin entirely to presumption and self-conceit. However rash and over-confident he might have been, however much he had bungled the whole business, he had the assurance of his conscience that the fault had not lain largely in his motives. Yes, he would if he could begin it all over again—to establish higher principles of trade—to make trade honourable, to fill hungry mouths with wholesome food; and he would still have granted Fan’s petition at all hazards. How did he know that he was to prove the pioneer of trade reformation, while he was well assured that he was his sister’s natural refuge and stay? He could not have made himself strange to his own flesh, with whom his first duty lay. He must have acknowledged the obligation for charity to begin at home. Before the dusk prevented him, Oliver took out and re-read Harry Stanhope’s last letter. It was a little longer than the usual brief reports, which were hardly higher intellectual efforts than those of the young rustics whose vicar has seen that they have profited by a night-school. This was the ordinary style of Harry’s letters:— ‘Dear Constable,—Here goes. We are all well. Baby is thriving. She has got her frocks shortened, and looks the better for it. It is still awfully hot. We—Harry and me, for Mr. and Mrs. Weatherley don’t try the dodge—took a header, and had a swim in the river for an hour this morning. Woodhurst—that’s the man whose ground lies all about here, is to let us have lots of fishing. I hope you’re all right. ‘Yours, &c.’ That was as nearly as possible the substance of the unclerkly scrawls which Harry sent. But to write at all, without compelling cause, was a great advance on the writer’s native inconsiderateness and freedom from any comprehension of responsibility. In the letter which Oliver held in his hand, however, Harry, in his stumbling jerking manner, had contrived to say a good deal more.