at he must soon go in search of
work in some other town, Louisa came to him. She had witnessed the
interview in which her husband had discharged this faithful workman, had
found out where he lived, and had made her brother Tom bring her there
that she might tell Stephen how sorry she was and beg him to accept
money from her to help him in his distress.

This kindness touched Stephen. He thanked her and took as a loan a small
portion of the money she offered him.

Tom had come on this errand with his sister in a sulky humor. While he
listened now a thought came to him. As Louisa talked with Rachel, he
beckoned Stephen from the room and told him that he could perhaps aid
him in finding work. He told him to wait during the next two or three
evenings near the door of Bounderby's bank, and promised that he himself
would seek Stephen there and tell him further.

There was no kindness, however, in this proposal. It was a sudden plan,
wicked and cowardly. Tom had become a criminal. He had stolen money from
the bank and trembled daily lest the theft become known. What would be
easier now, he thought, than to hide his crime, by throwing suspicion on
some one else? He could force the door of the safe before he left at
night, and drop a key of the bank door, which he had secretly made, in
the street where it would afterward be found. He himself, then, next
morning, could appear to find the safe open and the money missing.
Stephen, he considered, would be just the one to throw suspicion upon.

All unconscious of this plot, Stephen in good faith waited near the bank
during three evenings, walking past the building again and again,
watching vainly for Tom to appear. Mrs. Sparsit, at her upper window,
wondered to see his bowed form haunting the place. Nothing came of his
waiting, however, and the fourth morning saw him, with his thoughts on
Rachel, trudging out of town along the highroad, bravely and
uncomplainingly, toward whatever new lot the future held for him.

Tom's plot worked well. Next day there was a sensation in Coketown.
Bounderby's bank was found to have been robbed. The safe, Tom declared,
he had found open, with a large part of its contents missing. A key to
the bank door was picked up in the street; this, it was concluded, the
thief had thrown away after using. Who had done it? Had any suspicious
person been seen about the place?

Many people remembered a strange old woman, apparently from the country,
who called