f
Barchester, who had at first caused his chaplain to answer them,
and had told Mr. Crawley somewhat roundly what was his opinion of a
clergyman who eat meat and did not pay for it. But nothing that the
bishop could say or do enabled Mr. Crawley to pay the butcher. It was
very grievous to such a man as Mr. Crawley to receive these letters
from such a man as Bishop Proudie; but the letters came, and made
festering wounds, but then there was an end of them. And at last
there had come forth from the butcher's shop a threat that if the
money were not paid by a certain date, printed bills should be posted
about the county. All who heard of this in Silverbridge were very
angry with Mr. Fletcher, for no one there had ever known a tradesman
to take such a step before; but Fletcher swore that he would
persevere, and defended himself by showing that six or seven months
since, in the spring of the year, Mr. Crawley had been paying money in
Silverbridge, but had paid none to him,--to him who had been not only
his earliest, but his most enduring creditor. "He got money from the
dean in March," said Mr. Fletcher to Mr. Walker, "and he paid twelve
pounds ten to Green, and seventeen pounds to Grobury, the baker." It
was that seventeen pounds to Grobury, the baker, for flour, which
made the butcher so fixedly determined to smite the poor clergyman
hip and thigh. "And he paid money to Hall and to Mrs. Holt, and to
a deal more; but he never came near my shop. If he had even shown
himself, I would not have said so much about it." And then a day
before the date named, Mrs. Crawley had come into Silverbridge, and
had paid the butcher twenty pounds in four five-pound notes. So far
Fletcher the butcher had been successful.

Some six weeks after this, inquiry began to be made as to a certain
cheque for twenty pounds drawn by Lord Lufton on his bankers in
London, which cheque had been lost in the early spring by Mr. Soames,
Lord Lufton's man of business in Barsetshire, together with a
pocket-book in which it had been folded. This pocket-book Soames had
believed himself to have left at Mr. Crawley's house, and had gone
so far, even at the time of the loss, as to express his absolute
conviction that he had so left it. He was in the habit of paying a
rentcharge to Mr. Crawley on behalf of Lord Lufton, amounting to
twenty pound four shillings, every half-year. Lord Lufton held
the large tithes of Hogglestock, and paid annually a sum of forty
pound