’My dear Arabin,

’Circumstances, of which you have probably heard something, compel me to write to you, as I fear, at some length.  I am sorry that the trouble of such a letter should be forced upon you during your holidays’;—­Mr Crawley, as he wrote this, did not forget to remind himself that he never had any holidays;—­’but I think you will admit, if you will bear with me to the end, that I have no alternative.

’I have been accused of stealing a cheque for twenty pounds, which cheque was drawn by Lord Lufton on his London bankers, and was lost out of his pocket by Mr Soames, his lordship’s agent, and was so lost, as Mr Soames states—­but with an absolute assertion—­during a visit which he made to my parsonage here at Hogglestock.  Of the fact that I paid the cheque to a tradesman in Silverbridge there is no doubt.  When questioned about it, I first gave an answer which was so manifestly incorrect that it has seemed odd to me that I should not have had credit for a mistake from those who must have seen that detection was so evident.  The blunder was undoubtedly stupid, and it now bears heavily on me.  I then, as I have learned, made another error—­of which I am aware that you have been informed.  I said that the cheque had come from you, and in saying so, I thought that it had formed a portion of that alms which your open-handed benevolence bestowed upon me when I attended on you, not long before your departure, in your library.  I have striven to remember the facts.  It may be—­nay, it probably is the case—­that such struggles to catch some accurate glimpse of bygone things do not trouble you.  You mind is, no doubt, clearer and stronger than mine, having been kept to its proper tune by greater and fitter work.  With me, memory is all but gone, and the power of thinking is on the wane!  I struggled to remember, and I thought that the cheque had been in an envelope which you handed to me—­and I said so.  I have since learned, from tidings received, as I am told, direct from yourself, that I was wrong in the second statement as I had been in the first.  The double blunder has, of course, been very heavy on me.

’I was taken before the magistrates at Silverbridge, and was by them committed to stand my trial at the assizes to be holden in Barchester on the twenty-eighth of this month.  Without doubt, the magistrates had not alternative but to commit me, and I am indebted to them that they have allowed me my present liberty upon bail.  That my sufferings in all this should have been grievous, you will understand.  But on that head I shall not touch, were it not that I am bound to explain to you that my troubles with reference to this parish of Hogglestock, to which I was appointed by you, have not been the slightest of those sufferings.  I felt at first, believing then that the world around me would think it unlikely that such a one as I had wilfully stolen a sum of money, that it was my duty