ter who, with the people
of his congregation, had received and befriended the reformed man; but
because of Toyner's desire to follow the most divine example, and also
because of his love to Ann Markham, he chose the other companionship. It
was a high ideal; something warred against it which he could not
understand, and his patience brought forth no mutual love.

When six months had passed away, Toyner had gained with his neighbours a
character for austerity in his personal habits and constant
companionship with the rough and the poor. The post of constable fell
vacant; Toyner's father had been constable in his youth; Toyner was
offered the post now, and he took it.

The constable in such villages as Fentown was merely a respectable man
who could be called upon on rare occasions to arrest a criminal. Crime
was seldom perpetrated in Fentown, except when it was of a nature that
could be winked at. Toyner had no uniform; he was put in possession of a
pair of hand-cuffs, which no one expected him to use; he was given a
nominal income; and the name of "constable" was a public recognition
that he was reformed.

Toyner had had many scruples of mind before he took this office. The
considerations which induced him to accept it were various. The austere
demand of law and the service of God were very near together in his
mind; nor are they in any strong mind ever separated except in parable.

Bart Toyner, who had for years appeared so weak and witless, possessed
in reality that fine quality of brain and heart which is so often a
prey to the temptation of intoxicants. He was now working out all the
theory of the new life in a mind that would not flinch before, or shirk
the gleams of truth struck from, sharp contact of fact with fact as the
days and hours knocked them together. For this reason it could not be
that his path would remain that plain path in which a man could run
seeing far before him. Soon he only saw his way step by step, around
there was darkness; but through that darkness, except in one black hour,
he always saw the mount of transfiguration and the light of heaven.

CHAPTER IV.

Another six months passed, and an event occurred which gave a great
shock to the little community and gave Toyner a pain of heart such as
almost nothing else could have given. Ann's father, John Markham, had a
deadly dispute with a man by the name of Walker. Walker was a
comparatively new comer to the town, or he would have know