Harry was well-nigh as sacred a trust bequeathed to Oliver by Fan as her child could be. Indeed, while there were many humane people to interpose and accept the gracious task of befriending the motherless babe, who would volunteer to fill the thankless office of standing by Harry and backing him in resisting the poison which was coursing through his veins, and the familiar demon that beset him? But in the meantime Oliver was not frightened to leave Harry Stanhope with his brother, his infant, and the Weatherleys. When Oliver recalled the last he confessed he had been unjust in asking incredulously who would bestow themselves on Harry unless to serve themselves by his undoing? So far from a knowledge of his former offences disposing the Weatherleys to withdraw from the old offender, it would only attach them to him more firmly. For a sinner who had turned or who gave the faintest indication of turning from the error of his ways, had, if it be possible, an almost morbid fascination for the clergyman and his wife. They were not content with fulfilling the divine commission, and preaching the grand truth that their Master would have mercy and not sacrifice, their zeal ran away with their discretion until they would have preferred the dying thief to the Apostle Paul. They went the length of selecting for their friends and associates rueful transgressors, in preference to men and women who had been kept and had kept themselves, with infinite pains, from gross transgression. This enthusiastic weakness which caused the Weatherleys to dote on reclaimed burglars and pet converted infidels, almost to the cold exclusion of people who had refrained from picking and stealing, and who had reverently trusted and believed, was apt to be fertile in producing wrath and restiveness in the intolerantly honest and loyal sections of the community; and, what was still worse, in growing crops of hypocrisy and fraud among the hardened and desperately deceitful outcasts from society. But at least it rendered the couple safe to care for Harry Stanhope and do their best to help him, and Oliver did not think that Harry would abuse their kindness. Oliver Constable did not hurry post haste, though he turned his face in the direction of Friarton Mill, when he separated from his companions, in the course of a few weeks after Fan’s death. He knew that many changes as well as a great blank awaited him, and he sought to fit himself to meet them in a spirit of peace, as well as to find healing for his recent wound. It was a soft, grey October afternoon when Oliver, leaving the railway at an intermediate station as before, walked through the well-known fields in their autumn livery, and arrived at Friarton Mill.