‘Never you mind, John,’ said Dan.  ’You keep yourself quiet, and don’t answer none of his questions.  He’s one of them low sort, he is.  I know him.  I knowed him for what he is directly I saw him.  Ferreting about—­that’s his game; to see if there’s anything to be got.’

‘But what is he ferreting for?’ said Mr John Stringer.

‘I’m ferreting for Mr Soames’s cheque for twenty pounds,’ said Mr Toogood.

‘That’s the cheque the parson stole,’ said Dan Stringer.  ’He’s to be tried for it at the ‘sizes.’

’You’ve heard about Mr Soames and his cheque, and about Mr Crawley, I daresay?’ said Mr Toogood.

‘I’ve heard a deal about them,’ said the landlord.

‘And so, I daresay, have you?’ said Toogood, turning to Dan Stringer.  But Dan Stringer did not seem inclined to carry on the conversation any further.  When he was hardly pressed, he declared that he just had heard that there was some parson in trouble about a sum of money; but that he knew no more about it than that.  He didn’t know whether it was a cheque or a note that the parson had taken, and had never been sufficiently interested in the matter to make any inquiry.

’But you’ve just said that Mr Soames’s cheque was the cheque the parson stole,’ said the astonished landlord, turning with open eyes, upon his cousin.

‘You be blowed,’ said Dan Stringer, the clerk, to Mr John Stringer, the landlord; and then walked out of the room back to the bar.

‘I understand nothing about it—­nothing at all,’ said the gouty man.

‘I understand nearly all about it,’ said Mr Toogood, following the red-nosed clerk.  There was no necessity that he should trouble the landlord any further.  He left the room, and went through the bar, and as he passed out along the hall, he found Dan Stringer with his hat on talking to the waiter.  The waiter immediately pulled himself up, and adjusted his dirty napkin under his arm, after the fashion of waiters, and showed that he intended to be civil to the customers of the house.  But he of the red nose cocked his hat, and looked with insolence at Mr Toogood, and defied him.  ’There’s nothing I do hate so much as them low-bred Old Bailey attorneys,’ said Mr Dan Stringer to the waiter, in a voice intended to reach Mr Toogood’s ears.  Then Mr Toogood told himself that Dan Stringer was not the thief himself, and that it might be very difficult to prove that Dan had even been the receiver of stolen goods.  He had, however, no doubt in his own mind but that such was the case.

He first went to the police office, and there explained his business.  Nobody at the police office pretended to forget Mr Soames’s cheque, or Mr Crawley’s position.  The constable went so far as to swear that there wasn’t a man, woman, or child in all Barchester who was not talking of Mr Crawley at that present moment.  Then Mr Toogood went with the constable to the private house of the mayor, and