praying to God's mercy to remove him from this world. It need hardly be
said that his poor wife in these days had a burden on her shoulders that
was more than enough to crush any woman.

She at last acknowledged to Mr Walker that she could not account for the
twenty pounds. She herself would write again to the dean about it, but
she hardly hoped for any further assistance there. 'The dean's answer
was plain,' said Mr Walker. 'He says that he gave Mr Crawley five
ten-pound notes, and those five notes we have traced to Mr Crawley's
hands.' Then Mrs Crawley could say nothing further beyond making
protestations of her husband's innocence.



CHAPTER II

BY HEAVENS, HE HAD BETTER NOT!

I must ask the reader to make acquaintance with Major Grantly of Cosby
Lodge, before he is introduced to the family of Mr Crawley, at their
parsonage at Hogglestock. It has been said that Major Grantly had thrown
a favourable eye on Grace Crawley--by which report occasion was given to
all men and women in those parts to hint that the Crawleys, with all
their piety and humility, were very cunning, and that one of the
Grantlys was--to say the least of it--very soft, admitted as it was
throughout the county of Barsetshire, that there was no family therein
more widely awake to the affairs generally of this world and the next
combined, than the family of which Archdeacon Grantly was the respected
head and patriarch. Mrs Walker, the most good-natured woman in
Silverbridge, had acknowledged to her daughter that she could not