sent from another source expressly to Barchester, to prevent such devouring, as far as it might be prevented by a mortal agency.  The bishop knew it all—­understood it all.  He regarded the archdeacon as a clergyman belonging to a party opposed to his party, and he disliked the man.  He knew that from his first coming into the diocese he had been encountered with enmity by the archdeacon and the archdeacon’s friends.  If left to himself he could feel and to a certain extent could resent such enmity.  But he had no faith in his wife’s doctrine of emanations.  He had not faith in many things which she believed religiously;—­and yet what could he do?  If he attempted to explain, she would stop him before he had got through the first half of his first sentence.

‘If he is out on bail—­’ commenced the bishop.

‘Of course he will be out on bail.’

‘Then I think he should feel—­’

’Feel!  Such men never feel!  What feeling can one expect from a convicted thief?’

‘Not convicted yet, my dear,’ said the bishop.

‘A convicted thief,’ repeated Mrs Proudie; and she vociferated the words in such a tone that the bishop resolved that he would for the future let the word convicted pass without notice.  After all she was only using the phrase in a peculiar sense given to it by herself.

‘It won’t be proper, certainly, that he should do the services,’ suggested the bishop.

’Proper!  It would be a scandal to the whole diocese.  How could he raise his head as he pronounced the eighth commandment?  That must be at least prevented.’

The bishop, who was seated, fretted himself in his chair, moving about with little movements.  He knew that there was a misery coming upon him; and, as far as he could see, it might become a great misery—­a huge blistering sore upon him.  When miseries came to him, as they did not unfrequently, he would unconsciously endeavour to fathom them and weigh them, and then, with some gallantry, resolve to bear them, if he could find that their depth and weight were not too great for his powers of endurance.  He would let the cold wind whistle by him, putting up the collar of his coat, and would be patient under the winter weather without complaint.  And he would be patient under the sun, knowing well that tranquillity is best for those who have to bear tropical heat.  But when the storm threatened to knock him off his legs, when the earth beneath him became too hot for his poor tender feet—­what could he do then?  There had been with him such periods of misery, during which he had wailed inwardly and had confessed to himself that the wife of his bosom was too much for him.  Now the storm seemed to be coming very roughly.  It would be demanded of him that he should exercise certain episcopal authority which he knew did not belong to him.  Now, episcopal authority admits of being stretched or contracted according to the character of the bishop who uses it.  It