d down the High Street of Baslehurst, and crossed over
Cawston bridge. On the bridge he was all alone, and he stood there
for a moment or two leaning upon the parapet looking down upon the
little stream beneath the arch. During the day many things had
occupied him, and he had hardly as yet made up his mind definitely
as to what he would do and what he would say during the hours of
the evening. From the moment in which Honyman had announced to him
Tappitt's intended resignation he became aware that he certainly
should go out to Bragg's End before that day was over. It had been
with him a settled thing, a thing settled almost without thought ever
since the receipt of Rachel's letter, that he would take this walk to
Bragg's End when he should have put his affairs at Baslehurst on some
stable footing; but that he would not take that walk before he had so
done.

"They say," Rachel had written in her letter, "they say that as the
business here about the brewery is so very unsettled, they think it
probable that you will not have to come back to Baslehurst any more."

In that had been the offence. They had doubted his stability, and,
beyond that, had almost doubted his honesty. He would punish them
by taking them at their word till both should be put beyond all
question. He knew well that the punishment would fall on Rachel,
whereas none of the sin would have been Rachel's sin; but he would
not allow himself to be deterred by that consideration.

"It is her letter," he said to himself, "and in that way will I
answer her. When I do go there again they will all understand me
better."

It had been, too, a matter of pride to him that Mr. Comfort and Mrs.
Butler Cornbury should thus be made to understand him. He would say
nothing of himself and his own purposes to any of them. He would
speak neither of his own means nor his own stedfastness. But he
would prove to them that he was stedfast, and that he had boasted
of nothing which he did not possess. When Mrs. Butler Cornbury had
spoken to him down by the Cleeves, asking him of his purpose, and
struggling to do a kind thing by Rachel, he had resolved at once that
he would tell her nothing. She should find him out. He liked her for
loving Rachel; but neither to her, nor even to Rachel herself, would
he say more till he could show them that the business about the
brewery was no longer unsettled.

But up to this moment--this moment in which he was standing on the
bridge, he had n