gathering in your head till you didn't rightly know where it
come from." Then he paused. "And after a bit you guv' it me to get
the money. Didn't you, now?"

"I did."

"And they do say if a poor man had done it, it'd been stealing, for
sartin."

"And I'm a poor man,--the poorest in all Hogglestock; and, therefore,
of course, it is stealing. Of course I am a thief. Yes; of course I
am a thief. When did not the world believe the worst of the poor?"
Having so spoken, Mr. Crawley rose from his chair and hurried out of
the cottage, waiting no further reply from Dan Morris or his wife.
And as he made his way slowly home, not going there by the direct
road, but by a long circuit, he told himself there could be no
sympathy for him anywhere. Even Dan Morris, the brickmaker, thought
that he was a thief.

"And am I a thief?" he said to himself, standing in the middle of the
road, with his hands up to his forehead.

CHAPTER XIII

The Bishop's Angel

It was nearly nine before Mr. Crawley got back to his house, and found
his wife and daughter waiting breakfast for him. "I should not wonder
if Grace were over here to-day," said Mrs. Crawley. "She'd better
remain where she is," said he. After this the meal passed almost
without a word. When it was over, Jane, at a sign from her mother,
went up to her father and asked him whether she should read with him.
"Not now," he said, "not just now. I must rest my brain before it
will be fit for any work." Then he got into the chair over the fire,
and his wife began to fear that he would remain there all the day.

But the morning was not far advanced, when there came a visitor who
disturbed him, and by disturbing him did him real service. Just at
ten there arrived at the little gate before the house a man on a
pony, whom Jane espied, standing there by the pony's head and looking
about for some one to relieve him from the charge of his steed. This
was Mr. Thumble, who had ridden over to Hogglestock on a poor spavined
brute belonging to the bishop's stable, and which had once been the
bishop's cob. Now it was the vehicle by which Mrs. Proudie's episcopal
messages were sent backwards and forwards through a twelve-miles ride
round Barchester; and so many were the lady's requirements, that
the poor animal by no means eat the hay of idleness. Mr. Thumble had
suggested to Mrs. Proudie, after their interview with the bishop and
the giving up of the letter to the clerical messenger's ch