However, he blabbed to me at Bilkley:  he takes a stiff glass.  Damme if I think he meant to turn king’s evidence; but he’s that sort of bragging fellow, the bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him, till he’d brag of a spavin as if it ’ud fetch money.  A man should know when to pull up.”  Mr. Bambridge made this remark with an air of disgust, satisfied that his own bragging showed a fine sense of the marketable.

“What’s the man’s name?  Where can he be found?” said Mr. Hawley.

“As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at the Saracen’s Head; but his name is Raffles.”

“Raffles!” exclaimed Mr. Hopkins.  “I furnished his funeral yesterday.  He was buried at Lowick.  Mr. Bulstrode followed him.  A very decent funeral.”  There was a strong sensation among the listeners.  Mr. Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which “brimstone” was the mildest word, and Mr. Hawley, knitting his brows and bending his head forward, exclaimed, “What?—­where did the man die?”

“At Stone Court,” said the draper.  “The housekeeper said he was a relation of the master’s.  He came there ill on Friday.”

“Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him,” interposed Bambridge.

“Did any doctor attend him?” said Mr. Hawley

“Yes.  Mr. Lydgate.  Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one night.  He died the third morning.”

“Go on, Bambridge,” said Mr. Hawley, insistently.  “What did this fellow say about Bulstrode?”

The group had already become larger, the town-clerk’s presence being a guarantee that something worth listening to was going on there; and Mr. Bambridge delivered his narrative in the hearing of seven.  It was mainly what we know, including the fact about Will Ladislaw, with some local color and circumstance added:  it was what Bulstrode had dreaded the betrayal of—­and hoped to have buried forever with the corpse of Raffles—­it was that haunting ghost of his earlier life which as he rode past the archway of the Green Dragon he was trusting that Providence had delivered him from.  Yes, Providence.  He had not confessed to himself yet that he had done anything in the way of contrivance to this end; he had accepted what seemed to have been offered.  It was impossible to prove that he had done anything which hastened the departure of that man’s soul.

But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through Middlemarch like the smell of fire.  Mr. Frank Hawley followed up his information by sending a clerk whom he could trust to Stone Court on a pretext of inquiring about hay, but really to gather all that could be learned about Raffles and his illness from Mrs. Abel.  In this way it came to his knowledge that Mr. Garth had carried the man to Stone Court in his gig; and Mr. Hawley in consequence took an opportunity of seeing Caleb, calling at his office to ask whether he had time to undertake an arbitration if it were required, and then asking him incidentally about Raffles.