ch he ought
to bear gallantly. He throws his load down on the roadside, and does
not care who may bear it, or who may suffer because he is too poor
a creature to struggle on! Have you no feeling that, though it may
be hard with you here,"--and the Vicar, as he spoke, struck his
breast,--"you should so carry your outer self, that the eyes of those
around you should see nothing of the sorrow within? That is my idea
of manliness, and I have ever taken you to be a man."

"We work for the esteem of others while we desire it. I desire
nothing now. She has so knocked me about that I should be a liar if
I were to say that there is enough manhood left in me to bear it. I
shan't kill myself."

"No, Harry, you won't do that."

"But I shall give up the place, and go abroad."

"Whom will you serve by that?"

"It is all very well to preach, Frank. Bad as I am I could preach to
you if there were a matter to preach about. I don't know that there
is anything much easier than preaching. But as for practising, you
can't do it if you have not got the strength. A man can't walk if you
take away his legs. If you break a bird's wing he can't fly, let the
bird be ever so full of pluck. All that there was in me she has taken
out of me. I could fight him, and would willingly, if I thought there
was a chance of his meeting me."

"He would not be such a fool."

"But I could not stand up and look at her."

"She has left Bullhampton, you know."

"It does not matter, Frank. There is the place that I was getting
ready for her. And if I were there, you and your wife would always be
thinking about it. And every fellow about the estate knows the whole
story. It seems to me to be almost inconceivable that a woman should
have done such a thing."

"She has not meant to act badly, Harry."

"To tell the truth, when I look back at it all, I blame myself more
than her. A man should never be ass enough to ask any woman a second
time. But I had got it into my head that it was a disgraceful thing
to ask and not to have. It is that which kills me now. I do not think
that I will ever again attempt anything, because failure is so hard
to me to bear. At any rate, I won't go back to the Privets." This he
added after a pause, during which the Vicar had been thinking what
new arguments he could bring up to urge his friend's return.

Fenwick learned that Gilmore had sent a cheque to his bailiff by the
post of the preceding night. He acknowledged that in se