The pity was that though there were no deans and proctors at Friarton, and though the intervention of the rural Charlies or Bobbies might not be called for, the public of the little town was at once more lynx-eyed and sterner in its judgments. There was far less allowance made for the young plebeians than for the young patricians. Unaccountably and inconsistently, much more was expected from the former than from the latter. Old heads on young shoulders were unhesitatingly demanded in many quarters in the case of the embryo tradesmen, with their poor education, and their slender resources by comparison for occupying their leisure hours. It was hard to say why this inequality of opinion existed, unless the early call of these young shopmen to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, and the hand-to-hand struggle of some of them with poverty and privation from their cradles upwards, might be supposed, by an austere necessity, to steady and dignify the lads betimes, not to drive them desperate and impel them to snatch greedily at any small indulgence, however base and fatal, which came within their reach. If this were the explanation, an exceptional though perilous honour was conferred on ‘the counter-jumpers’ when they were expected to be wiser than their fellows. For Oliver was certain of one thing, that if any draper’s assistant, or saddler or ironmonger’s apprentice, in Friarton happened to be simply intoxicated, not so much with strong drink as with the restless energy and furious mirth of youth in an ebullition that would be treated with tolerant tenderness at a university, and punished by nothing worse than the mild reproof or the nominal fine, which was a trifle light as air to the privileged undergraduate, the young tradesman would be generally set down as drunk with less ethereal liquor. If caught in the act of creating a disturbance so heinous as waking the silent night with hideous clamour, giving chase to a surprised, surrounded, and hustled guardian of the public peace, smashing wantonly a street lamp, or wrenching off ‘maliciously’ a bell or knocker, he would be hailed before a bench of magistrates, and mulcted of a sum out of all proportion to his exchequer. And that was not all. He would have to pay what was for him a far heavier penalty. His character, which was his capital, his chief dependence for work and livelihood, would suffer. His employer, though he had been young himself once, would be so influenced by the magisterial verdict as to begin to lose confidence in his assistant. The inspector of the Sunday or night school in which the lad might have been religiously enough inclined, and sufficiently benevolent to take an interest and have a class, would sharply signify to the offender that he was no credit to the institution, and had better give up his connection with it. The clergyman, receiving the report of the inspector, would not think himself justified in