Mr. Harding had been precentor of Barchester for ten years when the murmurs respecting the proceeds of Hiram’s estate again became audible.  He was aware that two of his old men had been heard to say that if everyone had his own, they might each have their hundred pounds a year, and live like gentlemen, instead of a beggarly one shilling and sixpence a day.  One of this discontented pair, Abel Handy, had been put into the hospital by Mr. Harding himself; he had been a stonemason in Barchester, and had broken his thigh by a fall from a scaffolding. (Dr. Grantly had been very anxious to put into it instead an insufferable clerk of his at Plumstead, who had lost all his teeth, and whom the archdeacon hardly knew how to get rid of by other means.) There was living at Barchester a young man, a surgeon, named John Bold, and both Mr. Harding and Dr. Grantly were well aware that to him was owing the pestilent rebellious feeling which had shown itself in the hospital; and the renewal, too, of that disagreeable talk about Hiram’s estates which was again prevalent in Barchester.  Nevertheless, Mr. Harding and Mr. Bold were acquainted with each other, and were friends in spite of the great disparity in their years; for John Bold—­whose father had been a physician in London, who had bought property in Barchester and retired to die there—­was not more than twenty-seven years old at this time.

John Bold was a clever man, but, having enough to live on since his father’s death, he had not been forced to work for bread.  In three years he had not taken three fees, but he frequently bound up the bruises and set the limbs of such of the poorer classes as professed his way of thinking.  Bold was a strong reformer.  His passion was the reform of all abuses, and he was thoroughly sincere in his patriotic endeavours to mend mankind.  No wonder that Dr. Grantly regarded Bold as a firebrand and a demagogue, and would have him avoided as the plague.  But the old Doctor and Mr. Harding had been fast friends and young Johnny Bold used to play as a boy on Mr. Harding’s lawn.

Eleanor Harding had not plighted her troth to John Bold, but she could not endure that anyone should speak harshly of him; she cared little to go to houses where she would not meet him, and, in fact, she was in love.  Nor was there any reason why Eleanor Harding should not love John Bold.  His character was in all respects good; he had sufficient income to support a wife, and, above all, he was in love with her.  Mr. Harding himself saw no reason why his daughter should not love John Bold.

II.—­The Barchester Reformer

Bold had often expressed his indignation at the misappropriation of church funds in general, in the hearing of his friend the precentor, but the conversation had never referred to anything at Barchester.

He heard from different quarters that Hiram’s bedesmen were treated as paupers, whereas the property to which they were, in effect, heirs, was very large, and being looked on as the upholder of the rights of the poor of Barchester, he was instigated by a lawyer, whom he had previously employed, to call upon Mr. Chadwick, the steward of the episcopal estates, for a statement as to the funds of the estate.