And then the butcher had written repeated letters to the bishop—­to bishop Proudie of Barchester, who had first caused his chaplain to answer them, and had told Mr Crawley somewhat roundly what was his opinion of a clergyman who ate meat and did not pay for it.  But nothing that bishop could say or do enabled Mr Crawley to pay the butcher.  It was very grievous to such a man as Mr Crawley to receive these letters from such a man as Bishop Proudie; but the letters came, and made festering wounds, but then there was an end of them.  And at last there had come forth from the butcher’s shop a threat that if the money were not paid by a certain date, printed bills would be posted about the country.  All who heard of this in Silverbridge were very angry with Mr Fletcher, for no one there had ever known a tradesman to take such a step before; but Fletcher swore that he would persevere, and defended himself by showing that six or seven months since, in the spring of the year, Mr Crawley had been paying money in Silverbridge, but had paid none to him—­to him who had been not only his earliest, but his most enduring creditor.  ‘He got money from the dean in March,’ said Mr Fletcher to Mr Walker ’and he paid twelve pounds ten to Green, and seventeen pounds to Grobury the baker.’  It was that seventeen pounds to Grobury, the baker, for flour, which made the butcher fixedly determined to smite the poor clergyman hip and thigh.  ’And he paid money to Hall and to Mrs Holt, and to a deal more; but he never came near my shop.  If he had even shown himself, I would not have so much about it.’  And then a day before the day named, Mrs Crawley had come into Silverbridge, and had paid the butcher twenty pounds in four five-pound notes.  So far Fletcher the butcher had been successful.

Some six weeks after this, inquiry began to be made as to a certain cheque for twenty pounds drawn by Lord Lufton on his bankers in London, which cheque had been lost in the early spring by Mr Soames, Lord Lufton’s man of business in Barsetshire, together with a pocket-book in which it had been folded.  This pocket-book Soames had believed himself to have left it at Mr Crawley’s house, and had gone so far, even at the time of the loss, as to express his absolute conviction that he had so left it.  He was in the habit of paying a rentcharge to Mr Crawley on behalf of Lord Lufton, amounting to twenty pounds four shillings, every half-year.  Lord Lufton held the large tithes of Hogglestock, and paid annually a sum of forty pounds eight shillings to the incumbent.  This amount was, as a rule, remitted punctually by Mr Soames through the post.  On the occasion now spoken of, he had had some reason to visit Hogglestock, and had paid the money personally to Mr Crawley.  Of so much there is no doubt.  But he had paid it by a cheque drawn by himself on his own bankers at Barchester, and that cheque had been cashed in the ordinary way on the next morning.  On returning to his own house in Barchester he had missed his pocket-book, and had written to Mr Crawley to make inquiry.  There had been no money in it, beyond the cheque drawn by Lord Lufton for twenty pounds.  Mr Crawley had answered this letter by another, saying that no pocket-book had been found in his house.  All this had happened in March.