horse, and the same heart to make him go across a country as they. And then, too, he found that men liked him—men and women also—men and women who were high in worldly standing. His ass's ears were tickled, and he learned to fancy that he was intended by nature for the society of high people. It seemed as though he were following his appointed course in meeting men and women of the world at the houses of the fashionable and the rich. He was not the first clergyman that had so lived and had so prospered. Yes, clergymen had so lived, and had done their duties in their sphere of life altogether to the satisfaction of their countrymen—and of their sovereigns. Thus Mark Robarts had determined that he would touch pitch, and escape defilement if that were possible. With what result those who have read so far will have perceived.
Late on the following afternoon, who should drive up to the Parsonage door but Mr. Forrest, the bank manager from Barchester—Mr. Forrest, to whom Sowerby had always pointed as the Deus ex machinâ who, if duly invoked could relieve them all from their present troubles, and dismiss the whole Tozer family—not howling into the wilderness, as one would have wished to do with that brood of Tozers, but so gorged with prey that from them no farther annoyance need be dreaded. All this Mr. Forrest could do; nay, more, most willingly would do. Only let Mark Robarts put himself into the banker's hand, and blandly sign what documents the banker might desire.
"This is a very unpleasant affair," said Mr. Forrest, as soon as they were closeted together in Mark's bookroom; in answer to which observation the parson acknowledged that it was a very unpleasant affair.
"Mr. Sowerby has managed to put you into the hands of about the worst set of rogues now existing, in their line of business, in London."
"So I supposed; Curling told me the same." Curling was the Barchester attorney whose aid he had lately invoked.
"Curling has threatened them that he will expose their whole trade; but one of them who was down here, a man named Tozer, replied that you had much more to lose by exposure than he had. He went farther, and declared that he would defy any jury in England to refuse him his money. He swore that he discounted both bills in the regular
