No one there believed in his reformation.  He had lost money for his father in his last debauch; the man who was virtually a partner would not trust him again.  He had a nominal business of his own, an agency which he had heretofore neglected, and now he worked hard, living frugally, and for the first time in his life earned his own living.  The rules of conduct which the preacher had laid down for him were simple and broad.  He was to see God in everything, accepting all events joyfully from His hand; he was so to preach Him in life and word that others would love Him; he was to do all his work as unto a God who beheld and cared for the minutest things of earth; he was to abstain, not only from all sin, but from all things that might lead to evil.  At first he saw no contradiction in this rule of life; it seemed a plain path, and he walked, nay ran, upon it for a long distance.

Between Toyner and his old friends the change of his life and thoughts had made the widest breach.  That outward show of companionship remained was due only to patient persistence on his part and the endurance of the pain and shame of being in society where he was not wanted and where he felt nothing congenial.  There was a Scotch minister 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.