men in the world whose sufferings were sharper even than his own.  Of what sort had been the life of the man who had stood for years at the top of a pillar?  But then the man on the pillar had been honoured by all around him.  And thus, though he had thought of the man on the pillar to encourage himself be remembering how lamentable had been that man’s sufferings, he came to reflect that after all his own sufferings were perhaps keener than those of the man on the pillar.

When he reached home, he was very ill.  There was no doubt about it then.  He staggered to his arm-chair, and stared at his wife first, and then smiled at her with his ghastly smile.  He trembled all over, and when food was brought to him he could not eat it.  Early on the next morning the doctor was by his bedside, and before that evening came he was delirious.  He had been at intervals in this state for nearly two days, when Mrs Crawley wrote to Grace, and though she had restrained herself telling everything, she had written with sufficient strength to bring Grace at once to her father’s bedside.

He was not so ill when Grace arrived home but that he knew her, and he seemed to received some comfort from her coming.  Before she had been in the house an hour she was reading Greek to him, and there was no wandering in his mind as to the due emphasis to be given to the plaints of the injured heroines, or as to the proper meaning of the choruses.  And as he lay with his head half buried in the pillows, he shouted out long passages, lines from tragic plays by the score, and for a while seemed to have all the enjoyment of a dear old pleasure placed newly within his reach.  But he tired of this after a while, and then, having looked round to see that his wife was not in the room, he began to talk of himself.

‘So you have been to Allington, my dear?’

‘Yes, papa.’

‘Is it a pretty place?’

‘Yes, papa;—­very pretty.’

‘And they were good to you?’

‘Yes, papa;—­very good.’

’Had they heard anything there about—­me; of this trial that is to come on?’

‘Yes, papa; they had heard of it.’

’And what did they say?  You need not think that you will shock me by telling me.  They cannot say worse there than people have said here or think worse.’

‘They don’t think at all badly of you at Allington, papa.’

‘But they must think badly of me if the magistrates are right.’

‘They suppose that there has been a mistake;—­as we all think.’

‘They do not try men at the assizes for mistakes.’

‘That you have been mistaken, I mean;—­and the magistrates mistaken.’

‘But cannot have been mistaken, Grace.’

’I don’t know how to explain myself, papa; but we all know that it is very sad, and are quite sure that you have never meant for one moment to do anything that is wrong.’