The accident and its result, when the latter came to be fully known, excited some stir and talk in Friarton. Of course no ordinary fall on a level country road as smooth as a bowling-green, to a man in full possession of his wits and limbs, could have occasioned such a disaster. The marvel was, how Oliver Constable had fallen at all on the familiar and sure ground even in the uncertain light of gathering night, people commented with raised eyebrows. But doubtless it was his best policy to vouchsafe no details of this unaccountable fall. There could be hardly any question that it had occurred in some discreditable scuffle or brawl with low companions. The speakers recalled the moonlight frolics of the young tradesmen, the time out of mind removal of lamps from honoured doors, the letting loose of a pig or two from their styes, with the wild attempt at inaugurating a boar-hunt in the streets of Friarton. Oliver Constable had been known to be present at these disgraceful performances, though he might have been charitably supposed beyond taking an active part in the idiotic riotous amusements. But innate low tastes, possibly a secret, wretched, craving for what was generally the stimulant to such uproarious behaviour, had certainly prevailed over the superficial refinement wrought by education. Oliver Constable was likely to prove a dangerous tempter and corrupter in place of a fine model for his class to follow, and a bracing encouragement by way of example to the young men of the lower middle rank. He was a proper fellow to mask his self-indulgence and license under the guise of philanthropy and unworldliness, to pose as a reformer! Here was a crying instance of a wolf in sheep’s clothing! Mrs. Hilliard repeated the essence of the scandal to her cousin Catherine over their afternoon tea. Oliver Constable was coming out in the colours which might, perhaps, have been detected from the first, through the daubing done over them, by a man of the world. The accident which had fixed a permanent shamble on his gait, was said to have happened in a shocking drunken row.