since the day on which he had refused Mr Thumble admission to his pulpit.  At that time people believed him to be innocent, and he so believed of himself.  Now, people believed him to be guilty, and it could not be right that a man held in such slight esteem could exercise the functions of a parish priest, let his own opinion of himself be what it might.  He would submit himself, and go anywhere—­to the galleys or the workhouse, if they wished it.  As for his wife and children, they would, he said to himself, be better without him than with him.  The world would never be so hard to a woman or to children as it had been to him.

He was sitting saturated with rain—­saturated also with thinking—­and quite unobservant of anything around him, when he was accosted by an old man from Hoggle End, with whom he was well acquainted.  ’Thee be wat, Master Crawley,’ said the old man.

‘Wet!’ said Crawley, recalled suddenly back to the realities of life.  ‘Well—­yes.  I am wet.  That’s because it’s raining.’

‘Thee be teeming o’wat.  Hadn’t thee better go home?’

‘And are you not wet also,’ said Mr Crawley, looking at the old man, who had been at work in the brickfield, and who was soaked with mire, and from whom there seemed to come a steam of muddy mist.

’Is it me, yer reverence?  I’m wat of course.  The loikes of us is always wat—­that is barring the insides of us.  It comes to us natural to have the rheumatics.  How is one of us to help hisself against having on ’em?  But there ain’t no call for the loikes of you to have the rheumatics.’

‘My friend,’ said Crawley, who was now standing on the road—­and as he spoke he put out his arm and took the brickmaker by the hand, ’there is a worse complaint than rheumatism—­there is, indeed.’

‘There’s what they calls the collerer,’ said Giles Hoggett, looking up into Crawley’s face.  ‘That ain’t a-got hold of yer?’

’Ay, and worse than the cholera.  A man is killed all over when he is struck with pride—­and yet he lives.’

‘Maybe that’s bad enough too,’ said Giles, with his hand still held by the other.

‘It is bad enough,’ said Crawley, striking his breast with his left hand.  ‘It is bad enough.’

’Tell ’ee what, Master Crawley;—­and yer reverence mustn’t think as I means to be preaching; there ain’t nowt a man can’t bear if he’ll only be dogged.  You to whome, Master Crawley, and think o’ that, and maybe it’ll do ye a good yet.  It’s dogged as does it.  It ain’t thinking about it.’  Then Giles Hoggett withdrew his hand from the clergyman’s, and walked away towards his home at Hoggle End.  Mr Crawley also turned away homewards, and as he made his way through the lanes, he repeated to himself Giles Hoggett’s words.  ’It’s dogged as does it.  It’s not thinking about it.’