they completed the furniture of the room.  It was not such a room as one would wish to see inhabited by an beneficed clergyman of the Church of England; but they who know what money will do and what it will not, will understand how easily a man with a family, and with a hundred and thirty pounds a year, may be brought to the need of inhabiting such a chamber.  When it is remembered that three pounds of meat a day, at ninepence a pound, will cost over forty pounds a year, there need be no difficulty in understanding that it may be so.  Bread for such a family must cost at least twenty-five pounds.  Clothes for five persons of whom one must at any rate wear the raiment of a gentleman, can hardly be found for less than ten pounds a year a head.  Then there remains fifteen pounds for tea, sugar, beer, wages, education, amusements and the like.  In such circumstances a gentleman can hardly pay much for the renewal of furniture!

Mrs Crawley could not answer her husband’s question before her daughter, and was therefore obliged to make another excuse for again sending her out of the room.  ‘Jane, dear,’ she said, ’bring my things down to the kitchen and I will change them by the fire.  I will be there in two minutes, when I have had a word with your papa.’  The girl went immediately and then Mrs Crawley answered her husband’s question.  ’No, my dear; there is no question of you going to prison.’

‘But there will be.’

’I have undertaken that you shall attend before the magistrates at Silverbridge in Thursday next, at twelve o’clock.  You will do that?’

’Do it!  You mean, I suppose, to say that I must go there.  Is anybody to come and fetch me?’

’Nobody will come.  Only you must promise that you will be there.  I have promised for you.  You will go; will you not?’ She stood leaning over him, half embracing him, waiting for an answer; but for a while he gave none.  ’You will tell me that you will do what I have undertaken for you, Josiah?’

’I think I would rather that they fetched me.  I think that I will not go myself.’

’And have policemen come for you in the parish!  Mr Walker has promised that he will send over his phaeton.  He sent me home in it today.’

’I want nobody’s phaeton.  If I go I will walk.  If it were ten times the distance, and though I had not a shoe left to my feet I would walk.  If I go there at all, of my own accord, I will walk there.’

‘But you will go?’

’What do I care for the parish?  What matters who sees me now?  I cannot be degraded as worse than I am.  Everybody knows it.’

‘There is no disgrace without guilt,’ said his wife.

’Everybody thinks me guilty.  I see it in their eyes.  The children know of it, and I hear whispers in the school.  “Mr Crawley has taken some money.”  I heard the girl say it myself.’

‘What matters what the girl says?’

’And yet you would have me go in a fine carriage to Silverbridge, as though to a wedding.  If I am wanted let them take me as they would another.  I shall be here for them—­unless I am dead.’