Were he one who filled no position requiring special responsibility, that might be very well.  His friends might undertake to look after him, and the prosecution might perhaps be smothered.  But Mr Crawley holds a living, and if he escape he will be triumphant—­especially triumphant over the bishop.  Now, if he has really taken this money, and if his only excuse be that he did not know when he took it whether he was stealing or whether he was not—­for the sake of justice that ought not to be allowed.’

‘You think he certainly did steal the money?’ said Johnny.

‘You have heard the evidence, no doubt?’ said Mr Walker.

‘I don’t feel quite sure about it, yet,’ said Mr Toogood.

‘Quite sure of what?’ said Mr Walker.

‘That the cheque got dropped in his house.’

‘It was at any rate traced to his hands.’

‘I have no doubt about that,’ said Toogood.

‘And he can’t account for it,’ said Walker.

‘A man isn’t bound to show where he got his money,’ said Johnny.  ‘Suppose that sovereign is marked,’ and Johnny produced a coin from his pocket, ’and I don’t know but what it is; and suppose it is proved to have belonged to someone who lost it, and then to be traced to my own hands—­how am I to say where I got it?  If I were asked I should simply decline to answer.’

‘But a cheque is not a sovereign, Mr Eames,’ said Walker.  ’It is presumed that a man can account for the possession of a cheque.  It may be that a man should have a cheque in his possession and not be able to account for it, and should yet be open to no grave suspicion.  In such a case a jury has to judge.  Here is the fact:  that Mr Crawley has the cheque, and brings it in to use some considerable time after it is drawn; and the additional fact that the drawer of the cheque had lost it, as he thought, in Mr Crawley’s house, and had looked for it there, soon after it was drawn, and long before it was paid.  A jury must judge; but, as a lawyer, I should say that the burden of disproof lies with Mr Crawley.’

‘Did you find out anything, Mr Walker,’ said Toogood, ’about the man who drove Mr Soames that day?’

‘No—­nothing.’

‘The trap was from “The Dragon” at Barchester, I think?’

‘Yes—­from “The Dragon of Wantly".’

‘A respectable sort of house?’

‘Pretty well for that, I believe.  I’ve heard that the people are poor,’ said Walker.

’Somebody told me that they’d had a queer lot about the house, and that three or four of them left just then.  I think I heard that two or three men from the place went to New Zealand together.  It just came out in conversation while I was in the inn-yard.’

‘I have never heard anything of it,’ said Walker.

‘I don’t say that it can help us.’

‘I don’t see that it can,’ said Walker.