ed to do you a service; and as for its not
being talked about, that is out of the question."

"And for yourself, Mr. Robarts, whom I have ever regarded as a friend
since circumstances brought me into your neighbourhood,--for you,
whose sister I love tenderly in memory of past kindness, though now
she is removed so far above my sphere, as to make it unfit that I
should call her my friend--"

"She does not think so at all."

"For yourself, as I was saying, pray believe me that though from the
roughness of my manner, being now unused to social intercourse, I
seem to be ungracious and forbidding, I am grateful and mindful, and
that in the tablets of my heart I have written you down as one in
whom I could trust,--were it given to me to trust in men and women."
Then he turned round with his face to the wall and his back to his
visitor, and so remained till Mr. Robarts had left him. "At any rate,
I wish you well through your trouble," said Robarts; and as he spoke
he found that his own words were nearly choked by a sob that was
rising in this throat.

He went away without another word, and got out to his gig without
seeing Mrs. Crawley. During one period of the interview he had been
very angry with the man,--so angry as to make him almost declare to
himself that he would take no more trouble on his behalf. Then he
had been brought to acknowledge that Mr. Walker was right, and that
Crawley was certainly mad. He was so mad, so far removed from the
dominion of sound sense, that no jury could say that he was guilty
and that he ought to be punished for his guilt. And, as he so
resolved, he could not but ask himself the question, whether the
charge of the parish ought to be left in the hands of such a man? But
at last, just before he went, these feelings and these convictions
gave way to pity, and he remembered simply the troubles which seemed
to have been heaped on the head of this poor victim to misfortune. As
he drove home he resolved that there was nothing left for him to do,
but to write to the dean. It was known to all who knew them both,
that the dean and Mr. Crawley had lived together on the closest
intimacy at college, and that the friendship had been maintained
through life;--though, from the peculiarity of Mr. Crawley's
character, the two had not been much together of late years. Seeing
how things were going now, and hearing how pitiful was the plight in
which Mr. Crawley was placed, the dean would, no doubt, feel it