had resigned doing further business for him.

"He was disposed to interfere too much, was he?" said Mrs. Garth,
imagining that her husband had been touched on his sensitive point, and
not been allowed to do what he thought right as to materials and modes
of work.

"Oh," said Caleb, bowing his head and waving his hand gravely. And
Mrs. Garth knew that this was a sign of his not intending to speak
further on the subject.

As for Bulstrode, he had almost immediately mounted his horse and set
off for Stone Court, being anxious to arrive there before Lydgate.

His mind was crowded with images and conjectures, which were a language
to his hopes and fears, just as we hear tones from the vibrations which
shake our whole system. The deep humiliation with which he had winced
under Caleb Garth's knowledge of his past and rejection of his
patronage, alternated with and almost gave way to the sense of safety
in the fact that Garth, and no other, had been the man to whom Raffles
had spoken. It seemed to him a sort of earnest that Providence
intended his rescue from worse consequences; the way being thus left
open for the hope of secrecy. That Raffles should be afflicted with
illness, that he should have been led to Stone Court rather than
elsewhere--Bulstrode's heart fluttered at the vision of probabilities
which these events conjured up. If it should turn out that he was
freed from all danger of disgrace--if he could breathe in perfect
liberty--his life should be more consecrated than it had ever been
before. He mentally lifted up this vow as if it would urge the result
he longed for--he tried to believe in the potency of that prayerful
resolution--its potency to determine death. He knew that he ought to
say, "Thy will be done;" and he said it often. But the intense desire
remained that the will of God might be the death of that hated man.

Yet when he arrived at Stone Court he could not see the change in
Raffles without a shock. But for his pallor and feebleness, Bulstrode
would have called the change in him entirely mental. Instead of his
loud tormenting mood, he showed an intense, vague terror, and seemed to
deprecate Bulstrode's anger, because the money was all gone--he had
been robbed--it had half of it been taken from him. He had only come
here because he was ill and somebody was hunting him--somebody was
after him he had told nobody anything, he had kept his mouth shut.
Bulstrode, not knowing the significance