made him feel that he was bound to Grace Crawley.  He knew enough of himself to be sure that he could not give her up without making himself miserable.  And yet, as regarded her father, things were going from bad to worse.  Everybody now said that the evidence was so strong against Mr Crawley as to leave hardly any doubt of his guilt.  Even the ladies in Silverbridge were beginning to give up his cause, acknowledging that the money could not have come rightfully into his hands, and excusing him on the plea of partial insanity.  ’He has picked it up and put it by for months, and then thought that it was his own . . .’  The ladies at Silverbridge could find nothing better to say for him than that; and when young Mr Walker remarked that such little mistakes were the customary causes of men being taken to prison, the ladies of Silverbridge did not know how to answer him.  It had come to be their opinion that Mr Crawley was affected with a partial lunacy, which ought to be forgiven in one to whom the world had been so cruel; and when young Mr Walker endeavoured to explain to them that a man must be sane altogether or mad altogether, and that Mr Crawley must, if sane, be locked up as a thief, and if mad, locked up as a madman, they sighed, and were convinced that until the world should have been improved by a new infusion of romance, and a stronger feeling of justice, Mr John Walker was right.

And the result of this general opinion made its way to Major Grantly, and made its way, also, to the archdeacon at Plumstead.  As to the major, in giving him his due, it must be explained that the more certain he became of the father’s guilt, the more certain also he became of the daughter’s merits.  It was very hard.  The whole thing was cruelly hard.  It was cruelly hard upon him that he should be brought into this trouble, and be forced to take upon himself the armour of a knight-errant for the redress of the wrong on the part of the young lady.  But when alone in his house, or with his child, he declared to himself that he would do so.  It might well be that he could not live in Barsetshire after he had married Mr Crawley’s daughter.  He had inherited from his father enough of that longing for ascendancy among those around him to make him feel that in such circumstances he would be wretched.  But he would be made more wretched by the self-knowledge that he had behaved badly to the girl he loved; and the world beyond Barsetshire was open to him.  He would take her with him to Canada, to New Zealand, or to some other far-away country, and there begin his life again.  Should his father choose to punish him for so doing by disinheriting him, they would be poor enough; but, in his present frame of mind, the major was able to regard such poverty as honourable and not altogether disagreeable.