It did seem as if Oliver Constable had come home from watching by his sister’s death-bed to save the life of Jack Dadd and to speak a parting word of forgiveness and God-speed to ’Mily Polley, so as to deliver the whole town from the charge of selfish cowardice and intolerant persecution. If so, what sort of man could he really be who had received such a commission and given himself to its fulfilment? The reaction which had set in for poor ’Mily extended to Oliver. His fellow-townsmen commenced to conceive an altogether different impression of him, to exalt and make much of him, to canonise him—not merely before a hundred years had elapsed, but in his very lifetime. This experience is comparatively rare, still it happens sometimes that just as men’s sins occasionally go before them to judgment, so men’s patient continuance in well-doing is observed and awakens a response in their brethren before death has set its seal to virtue. In the meantime Oliver was perfectly unaware of the sudden revolution in the sentiments of the town towards him, so that in place of being unpopular and lightly esteemed—not to say grossly slandered—he had sprung at once to the height of popularity and general respect, among those who were not particularly ashamed of thus turning their coats, after they had so recently decried and abused their champion and hero. The only thing which struck Oliver as he walked along the streets of Friarton, in the drizzle and mud of November, was, that in spite of the season and the weather, he was constantly meeting friends and acquaintances, and that not merely everybody had something to say to him, but that all men and women were in the best humour, overflowing with geniality, as if they were reflecting June sunshine rather than November fog. CHAPTER XXXII. ‘DO THEY BELIEVE IN ME NOW?’ Oliver Constable’s announcement that he was retiring from the baking business had appeared three times in the Friarton weekly newspapers. The first time it was received with scoffs and sneers, the next it was met by a troubled silence, the last time it was anticipated by an urgent protest, though Oliver did not happen to be within hearing. The earliest result of his advertisement—so far as Oliver knew—came in the shape of a formal call in the back shop from Jim Hull. Jim had never entered the premises since he and his nephew ’Arry set up a rival business. Oliver made no question that Jim came now with some proposal from the flourishing firm of which he was one of the representatives, while he indulged in an austere satisfaction at the realisation of his own prophecies of the certain consequences of Oliver’s new-fangled, hair-splitting scruples and crotchets. Anyway, Oliver thought, Jim Hull might have saved himself the trouble. It was execrable taste in him to come and crow at all, in the circumstances.