"

"Not exactly that; but circumstances made me very much interested
about them. I fancy that the cheque was left in his house by
accident, and that it got into his hands he didn't know how, and that
when he used it he thought it was his."

"That's queer," said Johnny.

"He is very odd, you know."

"But it's a kind of oddity that they don't like at the assizes."

"The great cruelty is," said the major, "that whatever may be the
result, the punishment will fall so heavily upon his wife and
daughters. I think the whole county ought to come forward and take
them by the hand. Well, good-by. I'll drive on, as I'm a little in a
hurry."

"Good-by," said Johnny. "I'm very glad to have had the pleasure of
meeting you." "He's a good sort of fellow after all," he said to
himself when the gig had passed on. "He wouldn't have talked in that
way if he meant to hang back."

CHAPTER XXXII

Mr. Toogood

[Illustration]

Mr. Crawley had declared to Mr. Robarts, that he would summon no legal
aid to his assistance at the coming trial. The reader may, perhaps,
remember the impetuosity with which he rejected the advice on
this subject which was conveyed to him by Mr. Robarts with all the
authority of Archdeacon Grantly's name. "Tell the archdeacon," he had
said, "that I will have none of his advice." And then Mr. Robarts had
left him, fully convinced that any further interference on his part
could be of no avail. Nevertheless, the words which had then been
spoken were not without effect. This coming trial was ever present to
Mr. Crawley's mind, and though, when driven to discuss the subject, he
would speak of it with high spirit, as he had done both to the bishop
and to Mr. Robarts, yet in his long hours of privacy, or when alone
with his wife, his spirit was anything but high. "It will kill me,"
he would say to her. "I shall get salvation thus. Death will relieve
me, and I shall never be called upon to stand before those cruel
eager eyes." Then would she try to say words of comfort, sometimes
soothing him as though he were a child, and at others bidding him be
a man, and remember that as a man he should have sufficient endurance
to bear the eyes of any crowd that might be there to look at him.

"I think I will go up to London," he said to her one evening, very
soon after the day of Mr. Robarts's visit.

"Go up to London, Josiah!" Mr. Crawley had not been up to London
once since they had been settled at Hogglestock, a