Mrs. Walker, like many other mothers, was apt to be more
free in converse with her daughter than she was with her son. While
they were thus talking the father came in from his office, and
then the subject was dropped. He was a man between fifty and sixty
years of age, with grey hair, rather short, and somewhat corpulent,
but still gifted with that amount of personal comeliness which
comfortable position and the respect of others will generally seem to
give. A man rarely carries himself meanly, whom the world holds high
in esteem.

"I am very tired, my dear," said Mr. Walker.

"You look tired. Come and sit down for a few minutes before you
dress. Mary, get your father's slippers." Mary instantly ran to the
door.

"Thanks, my darling," said the father. And then he whispered to his
wife, as soon as Mary was out of hearing, "I fear the unfortunate man
is guilty. I fear he is! I fear he is!"

"Oh, heavens! what will become of them?"

"What indeed? She has been with me to-day."

"Has she? And what could you say to her?"

"I told her at first that I could not see her, and begged her not to
speak to me about it. I tried to make her understand that she should
go to some one else. But it was of no use."

"And how did it end?"

"I asked her to go in to you, but she declined. She said you could do
nothing for her."

"And does she think her husband guilty?"

"No, indeed. She think him guilty! Nothing on earth,--or from heaven
either, as I take it, would make her suppose it to be possible. She
came to me simply to tell me how good he was."

"I love her for that," said Mrs. Walker.

"So did I. But what is the good of loving her? Thank you, dearest.
I'll get your slippers for you some day, perhaps."

The whole county was astir in this matter of this alleged guilt of
the Reverend Josiah Crawley,--the whole county, almost as keenly
as the family of Mr. Walker, of Silverbridge. The crime laid to his
charge was the theft of a cheque for twenty pounds, which he was said
to have stolen out of a pocket-book left or dropped in his house, and
to have passed as money into the hands of one Fletcher, a butcher
of Silverbridge, to whom he was indebted. Mr. Crawley was in those
days the perpetual curate of Hogglestock, a parish in the northern
extremity of East Barsetshire; a man known by all who knew anything
of him to be very poor,--an unhappy, moody, disappointed man, upon
whom the troubles of the world always seemed to come w