Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 1.djvu/84

70 that the very notes of which this fifty pounds had consisted had been traced back to Mr. Crawley, and that they had had no connection with the cheque or with the money which had been given for the cheque at the bank.

Mr. Soames stated that he had lost the cheque with a pocket-book; that he had certainly lost it on the day on which he had called on Mr. Crawley at Hogglestock; and that he missed his pocket-book on his journey back from Hogglestock to Barchester. At the moment of missing it he remembered that he had taken the book out from his pocket in Mr. Crawley's room, and, at that moment, he had not doubted but that he had left it in Mr. Crawley's house. He had written and sent to Mr. Crawley to inquire, but had been assured that nothing had been found. There had been no other property of value in the pocket-book,—nothing but a few visiting cards and a memorandum, and he had therefore stopped the cheque at the London bank, and thought no more about it.

Mr. Crawley was then asked to explain in what way he came possessed of the cheque. The question was first put by Lord Lufton; but it soon fell into Mr. Walker's hands, who certainly asked it with all the kindness with which such an inquiry could be made. Could Mr. Crawley at all remember by what means that bit of paper had come into his possession, or how long he had had it? He answered the last question first. "It had been with him for months." And why had he kept it? He looked round the room sternly, almost savagely, before he answered, fixing his eyes for a moment upon almost every face around him as he did so. Then he spoke. "I was driven by shame to keep it,—and then by shame to use it." That this statement was true, no one in the room doubted.

And then the other question was pressed upon him; and he lifted up his hands, and raised his voice, and swore by the Saviour in whom he trusted, that he knew not from whence the money had come to him. Why then had he said that it had come from the dean? He had thought so. The dean had given him money, covered up, in an enclosure, "so that the touch of the coin might not add to my disgrace in taking his alms," said the wretched man, thus speaking openly and freely in his agony of the shame which he had striven so persistently to hide. He had not seen the dean's monies as they had been given, and he had thought that the cheque had been with them. Beyond that he could tell them nothing.

Then there was a conference between the magistrates and Mr. Walker, in which Mr. Walker submitted that the magistrates had no alternative