n forces it from
me. If you led a harmful life for gain, and kept others out of their
rights by deceit, to get the more for yourself, I dare say you
repent--you would like to go back, and can't: that must be a bitter
thing"--Caleb paused a moment and shook his head--"it is not for me to
make your life harder to you."

"But you do--you do make it harder to me," said Bulstrode constrained
into a genuine, pleading cry. "You make it harder to me by turning
your back on me."

"That I'm forced to do," said Caleb, still more gently, lifting up his
hand. "I am sorry. I don't judge you and say, he is wicked, and I am
righteous. God forbid. I don't know everything. A man may do wrong,
and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get his life
clear. That's a bad punishment. If it is so with you,--well, I'm
very sorry for you. But I have that feeling inside me, that I can't go
on working with you. That's all, Mr. Bulstrode. Everything else is
buried, so far as my will goes. And I wish you good-day."

"One moment, Mr. Garth!" said Bulstrode, hurriedly. "I may trust then
to your solemn assurance that you will not repeat either to man or
woman what--even if it have any degree of truth in it--is yet a
malicious representation?" Caleb's wrath was stirred, and he said,
indignantly--

"Why should I have said it if I didn't mean it? I am in no fear of
you. Such tales as that will never tempt my tongue."

"Excuse me--I am agitated--I am the victim of this abandoned man."

"Stop a bit! you have got to consider whether you didn't help to make
him worse, when you profited by his vices."

"You are wronging me by too readily believing him," said Bulstrode,
oppressed, as by a nightmare, with the inability to deny flatly what
Raffles might have said; and yet feeling it an escape that Caleb had
not so stated it to him as to ask for that flat denial.

"No," said Caleb, lifting his hand deprecatingly; "I am ready to
believe better, when better is proved. I rob you of no good chance.
As to speaking, I hold it a crime to expose a man's sin unless I'm
clear it must be done to save the innocent. That is my way of
thinking, Mr. Bulstrode, and what I say, I've no need to swear. I wish
you good-day."

Some hours later, when he was at home, Caleb said to his wife,
incidentally, that he had had some little differences with Bulstrode,
and that in consequence, he had given up all notion of taking Stone
Court, and indeed