walks along a river’s bank thinking of suicide, calculating now best he might kill himself—­whether the river does not offer an opportunity too good to be neglected, telling himself that the water is pleasant and cool, and that his ears would soon be deaf to the harsh noises of the world—­but yet knowing, or thinking that he knows, that he never will kill himself.  So it was with Mr Crawley.  Though his imagination pictured to himself the whole scene—­how he would humble himself to the ground as he acknowledged his unfitness, how he would endure the small-voiced triumph of the little bishop, how, from the abjectness of his own humility, even from the ground on which he would be crouching, he would rebuke the loud-mouthed triumph of the bishop’s wife; though there was no touch wanting to the picture which he thus drew—­he did not really propose to himself to commit this professional suicide.  His wife, too, had considered whether it might be in truth becoming that he should give up his clerical duties, at any rate for a while; but she had never thought that the idea was present to his mind also.

Mr Toogood had told him that people would say that he was mad; and Mr Toogood had looked at him, when he declared for the second time that he had no knowledge whence the cheque had come to him, as though his words were to be regarded as the words of some sick child; ‘Mad!’ he said to himself, as he walked home from the station that night.  ’Well; yes; and what if I am mad?  When I think of all that I have endured my wonder is that I should not have been mad sooner.’  And then he prayed—­yes, prayed, that in his madness the Devil might not be too strong for him, and that he might be preserved from some terrible sin of murder or violence.  What, if the idea should come to him in his madness that it would be well for him to slay his wife and his children?  Only that was wanting to make him of all men the most unfortunate.

He went down among the brickmakers on the following morning, leaving the house almost without a morsel of food, and he remained at Hoggle End for the greater part of the day.  There were sick persons there with whom he prayed, and then he sat talking with rough men while they ate their dinners, and he read passages from the Bible to women while they washed their husband’s clothes.  And for a while he sat with a little girl in his lap teaching the child her alphabet.  If it were possible for him he would do his duty.  He would spare himself in nothing, though he might suffer even to fainting.  And on this occasion he did suffer—­almost to fainting, for as he returned home in the afternoon he was forced to lean from time to time against the banks on the road-side, while the cold sweat of weakness trickled down his face, in order that he might recover strength to go on a few yards.  But he would persevere.  If God would but leave to him mind enough for his work, he would go on.  No personal suffering should deter him.  He told himself that there had been