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182 raising of his voice, "I will not add to my guilt by hiring any one to prove a falsehood or to disprove a truth."

"I'm sorry that you should say so, Mr. Crawley."

"I speak according to what light I have, Mr. Robarts; and if I have been over-warm with you,—and I am conscious that I have been in fault in that direction,—I must pray you to remember that I am somewhat hardly tried. My sorrows and troubles are so great that they rise against me and disturb me, and drive me on,—whither I would not be driven."

"But, my friend, is not that just the reason why you should trust in this matter to some one who can be more calm than yourself?"

"I cannot trust to any one,—in a matter of conscience. To do as you would have me is to me wrong. Shall I do wrong because I am unhappy?"

"You should cease to think it wrong when so advised by persons you can trust."

"I can trust no one with my own conscience;—not even the archdeacon, great as he is."

"The archdeacon has meant only well to you."

"I will presume so. I will believe so. I do think so. Tell the archdeacon from me that I humbly thank him;—that, in a matter of church question, I might probably submit my judgment to his; even though he might have no authority over me, knowing as I do that in such matters his experience has been great. Tell him also, that though I would fain that this unfortunate affair might burden the tongue of none among my neighbours,—at least till I shall have stood before the judge to receive the verdict of the jury, and, if needful, his lordship's sentence—still I am convinced that in what he has spoken, as also in what he has done, he has not yielded to the idleness of gossip, but has exercised his judgment with intended kindness."

"He has certainly intended to do you a service; and as for its not being talked about, that is out of the question."

"And for yourself, Mr. Robarts, whom I have ever regarded as a friend since circumstances brought me into your neighbourhood,—for you, whose sister I love tenderly in memory of past kindness, though now she is removed so far above my sphere, as to make it unfit that I should call her my friend"

"She does not think so at all."

"For yourself, as I was saying, pray believe me that though from the roughness of my manner, being now unused to social intercourse, I seem to be ungracious and forbidding, I am grateful and mindful, and