en are hired.
I will have none of it, and I will thank you to tell the archdeacon
so, with my respectful acknowledgements of his consideration and
condescension. I say nothing as to my own innocence, or my own guilt.
But I do say that if I am dragged before that tribunal, an innocent
man, and am falsely declared to be guilty, because I lack money to
bribe a lawyer to speak for me, then the laws of this country deserve
but little of that reverence which we are accustomed to pay to them.
And if I be guilty--"

"Nobody supposes you to be guilty."

"And if I be guilty," continued Mr. Crawley, altogether ignoring the
interruption, except by the repetition of his words, and a slight
raising of his voice, "I will not add to my guilt by hiring any one
to prove a falsehood or to disprove a truth."

"I'm sorry that you should say so, Mr. Crawley."

"I speak according to what light I have, Mr. Robarts; and if I have
been over-warm with you,--and I am conscious that I have been in
fault in that direction,--I must pray you to remember that I am
somewhat hardly tried. My sorrows and troubles are so great that they
rise against me and disturb me, and drive me on,--whither I would not
be driven."

"But, my friend, is not that just the reason why you should trust in
this matter to some one who can be more calm than yourself?"

"I cannot trust to any one,--in a matter of conscience. To do as you
would have me is to me wrong. Shall I do wrong because I am unhappy?"

"You should cease to think it wrong when so advised by persons you
can trust."

"I can trust no one with my own conscience;--not even the archdeacon,
great as he is."

"The archdeacon has meant only well to you."

"I will presume so. I will believe so. I do think so. Tell the
archdeacon from me that I humbly thank him;--that in a matter of
church question, I might probably submit my judgment to his; even
though he might have no authority over me, knowing as I do that in
such matters his experience has been great. Tell him also, that
though I would fain that this unfortunate affair might burden the
tongue of none among my neighbours,--at least till I shall have stood
before the judge to receive the verdict of the jury, and, if needful,
his lordship's sentence--still I am convinced that in what he has
spoken, as also in what he has done, he has not yielded to the
idleness of gossip, but has exercised his judgment with intended
kindness."

"He has certainly intend