The chapel had been almost to a man for John Hartley. Not that he was himself a chapel-man. As might have been supposed, the plain and pithy, bald and homely Nonconformist worship was extremely repugnant to him. But he had shown that he retained a reserve of his father’s and grandfather’s sharpness in seizing an advantage, when he renewed, in a manner, his alliance with the chapel, in anticipation of his election. He recalled to his recollection, what he had apparently long forgotten, that his father had been brought up a dissenter, and had lived and died a maintainer of dissent in his own person. John Hartley proved satisfactorily his powers of memory, by all at once bringing out a hidden store of knowledge of dissenting annals—exceedingly acceptable to a religious body accustomed to be, not to say slighted, but ignored, by their brethren of the church. He betrayed a sentimental inclination to linger over and dally with these old associations, which served to propitiate the chapel members for his desertion of their communion. He was not guilty of absolute misstatement when he suffered it to be inferred that circumstances had been against him. The difficulties of his position, the entanglements of the circle in which he moved, especially the natural influence of Lady Cicely, had drawn him back into the bosom of a church which was at last bestirring itself, and testifying to the good it had got from the noble protests of the early Puritans and the later Methodists against its periods of latitudinarianism. John Hartley did not pretend that he would return to the ranks of the nonconformists, and the chapel people of Friarton were too reasonable to expect it of a man like him. But he treated them with great respect, almost with pensive tenderness. He called upon Mr. Holland and mentioned in conversation that his father had sat under the profitable ministry of an able and pious grand-uncle of the Friarton pastor’s. John Hartley requested to be taken into the chapel on a week-day, though it did not seem to occur to him to attend the Wednesday lecture or the Friday prayer-meeting, and then asked humbly if he might be permitted to present new, more efficient, and ornamental chandeliers, to help to shed material light on the congregation—a request which was handsomely granted.