'I asked her to go in to you, but she declined. She said you could do
nothing for her.'

'And does she think her husband guilty?'

'No, indeed. She think him guilty! Nothing on earth--or from heaven
either, as I take it, would make her suppose it to be possible. She came
simply to tell me how good he was.'

'I love her for that,' said Mrs Walker.

'So did I. But what is the good of loving her? Thank you, dearest.
I'll get your slippers for you some day, perhaps.'

The whole county was astir with this matter of this alleged guilt of the
Reverend Mr Crawley--the whole county almost as keenly as the family of
Mr Walker, of Silverbridge. The crime laid to his charge was the theft
of a cheque for twenty pounds, which he was said to have stolen out of a
pocket-book left or dropped in his house, and to have passed as money
into the hands of one Fletcher, a butcher of Silverbridge, to whom he
was indebted. Mr Crawley was in those days the perpetual curate of
Hogglestock, a pariah in the northern extremity of East Barsetshire; a
man known by all who knew anything of him to be very poor--an unhappy,
moody, disappointed man, upon whom the troubles of the world always
seemed to come with a double weight. But he had ever been respected as a
clergyman, since his old friend Mr Arabin, the dean of Barchester, had
given him the small incumbency which he now held. Though moody, unhappy,
and disappointed, he was a hard-working, conscientious pastor, among the
poor people with whom his lot was cast; for in the parish of Hogglestock