Hawley, insistently. "What did this
fellow say about Bulstrode?"
The group had already become larger, the town-clerk's presence being
a guarantee that something worth listening to was going on there;
and Mr. Bambridge delivered his narrative in the hearing of seven.
It was mainly what we know, including the fact about Will Ladislaw,
with some local color and circumstance added: it was what Bulstrode
had dreaded the betrayal of--and hoped to have buried forever with
the corpse of Raffles--it was that haunting ghost of his earlier
life which as he rode past the archway of the Green Dragon he was
trusting that Providence had delivered him from. Yes, Providence.
He had not confessed to himself yet that he had done anything
in the way of contrivance to this end; he had accepted what seemed
to have been offered. It was impossible to prove that he had done
anything which hastened the departure of that man's soul.
But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through Middlemarch like
the smell of fire. Mr. Frank Hawley followed up his information
by sending a clerk whom he could trust to Stone Court on a pretext
of inquiring about hay, but really to gather all that could be
learned about Raffles and his illness from Mrs. Abel. In this way
it came to his knowledge that Mr. Garth had carried the man to Stone
Court in his gig; and Mr.
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