ith a double
weight. But he had ever been respected as a clergyman, since his
old friend Mr. Arabin, the dean of Barchester, had given him the
small incumbency which he now held. Though moody, unhappy, and
disappointed, he was a hard-working, conscientious pastor among
the poor people with whom his lot was cast; for in the parish of
Hogglestock there resided only a few farmers higher in degree than
field labourers, brickmakers, and such like. Mr. Crawley had now
passed some ten years of his life at Hogglestock; and during those
years he had worked very hard to do his duty, struggling to teach the
people around him perhaps too much of the mystery, but something also
of the comfort, of religion. That he had became popular in his parish
cannot be said of him. He was not a man to make himself popular in
any position. I have said that he was moody and disappointed. He was
even worse than this; he was morose, sometimes almost to insanity.
There had been days in which even his wife had found it impossible
to deal with him otherwise than as with an acknowledged lunatic. And
this was known among the farmers, who talked about their clergyman
among themselves as though he were a madman. But among the very poor,
among the brickmakers of Hoggle End,--a lawless, drunken, terribly
rough lot of humanity,--he was held in high respect; for they knew
that he lived hardly, as they lived; that he worked hard, as they
worked; and that the outside world was hard to him, as it was to
them; and there had been an apparent sincerity of godliness about the
man, and a manifest struggle to do his duty in spite of the world's
ill-usage, which had won its way even with the rough; so that Mr
Crawley's name had stood high with many in his parish, in spite of
the unfortunate peculiarity of his disposition. This was the man who
was now accused of stealing a cheque for twenty pounds.

But before the circumstances of the alleged theft are stated, a word
or two must be said as to Mr. Crawley's family. It is declared that a
good wife is a crown to her husband, but Mrs. Crawley had been much
more than a crown to him. As had regarded all the inner life of the
man,--all that portion of his life which had not been passed in the
pulpit or in pastoral teaching,--she had been crown, throne, and
sceptre all in one. That she had endured with him and on his behalf
the miseries of poverty, and the troubles of a life which had known
no smiles, is perhaps not to be alleg