knowing, or
thinking that he knows, that he never will kill himself. So it was
with Mr. Crawley. Though his imagination pictured to himself the whole
scene,--how he would humble himself to the ground as he acknowledged
his unfitness, how he would endure the small-voiced triumph of the
little bishop, how, from the abjectness of his own humility, even
from the ground on which he would be crouching, he would rebuke the
loud-mouthed triumph of the bishop's wife; though there was no touch
wanting to the picture which he thus drew,--he did not really propose
to himself to commit this professional suicide. His wife, too, had
considered whether it might be in truth becoming that he should give
up his clerical duties, at any rate for a while; but she had never
thought that the idea was present to his mind also.

Mr. Toogood had told him that people would say that he was mad; and Mr
Toogood had looked at him, when he declared for the second time that
he had no knowledge whence the cheque had come to him, as though his
words were to be regarded as the words of some sick child. "Mad!"
he said to himself, as he walked home from the station that night.
"Well; yes; and what if I am mad? When I think of all that I have
endured my wonder is that I should not have been mad sooner." And
then he prayed,--yes, prayed, that in his madness the Devil might
not be too strong for him, and that he might be preserved from some
terrible sin of murder or violence. What, if the idea should come to
him in his madness that it would be well for him to slay his wife and
his children? Only that was wanting to make him of all men the most
unfortunate.

He went down among the brickmakers on the following morning, leaving
the house almost without a morsel of food, and he remained at Hoggle
End for the greater part of the day. There were sick persons there
with whom he prayed, and then he sat talking with rough men while
they ate their dinners, and he read passages from the Bible to women
while they washed their husbands' clothes. And for a while he sat
with a little girl in his lap teaching the child her alphabet. If it
were possible for him he would do his duty. He would spare himself
in nothing, though he might suffer even to fainting. And on this
occasion he did suffer,--almost to fainting, for as he returned home
in the afternoon he was forced to lean from time to time against the
banks on the road-side, while the cold sweat of weakness trickled
down