And sure enough, Keys told Webster on the afternoon of the same day to keep the outside of the master-builder’s door for the rest of the journeyman baker’s stay at Friarton. The said master-builder had seized the opportunity of the first rumour of Webster’s quarrel with Mr. Constable to rescue his daughter from a future husband who had shown himself a breeder of mischief and instigator to rebellion, and was likely to end a noisy idle demagogue, a rolling stone that would gather no moss. After trying in vain to soften the father, and next to obtain a private interview with the weeping Nelly, in order to drag from her a promise to stand by her lover, against her father and the whole world, Webster took refuge in a Friarton gin-palace, and continued there so long as to do still more deadly injury to his cause. He was seen towards nightfall, in Friarton streets, drunk and disorderly, a long step for a tradesman who has hitherto been decorous in his cups, and who has not ‘gone on the spree’ like any shameless reprobate. Another day intervened, during which Webster went here and there, unable, in spite of his boasted powers, to secure a second engagement in Friarton or its neighbourhood. Instead of getting rid of the fumes of rage and drink, he contracted still denser fumes of a similar description. As ill luck would have it, on the evening of the second day, when the man, always headstrong and violent, and now half-beside himself with disappointment, mortification, and Dutch courage, was on his way to the village at which Jim Hull’s nephew still kept together his country connection, Webster’s path took him past Friarton Mill, and at some hundred yards’ distance from the house, he encountered his late master, taking a stroll in the autumn dusk, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth. Oliver was about to pass by his discarded baker with a brief ‘Good evening,’ when Webster brushed up against him, and delivered himself of a sneering, stammering proposal: ‘Let us have a little of your company, Mister Constable—take a walk together—not out of the way when you don’t object to fill my place in the bakehouse.’ Oliver saw the state the man was in, and sought to be quit of him without an unpleasant scene. ‘No; the arrangement would be rather different,’ he said coolly; ‘but I have no mind to discuss it. Get out of my road, man, or it will be the worse for you.’ The last sentence was provoked by Webster’s stumbling right across Oliver’s path, and standing unsteadily barring his farther progress.