One whispered that he had obtained the presentation as the reward of questionable services rendered to the patron. Another that he had forged his own deed of presentation, if such a thing existed. A third that he had been presented by mistake; and a fourth that he had deceived the authorities as to his age. It was noticeable that these rumors began low down in the social scale of the town and worked their way upward, which was odd; and that, whatever form the rumor took, there was not one who heard it who did not within a fortnight or three weeks come to associate it with the presence of a seedy, down-looking, unwholesome man, who was much about the rector’s doorway, and, when he was not there, was generally to be found at the Bull and Staff. Whether he was the disseminator of the reports, or, alike with the rector, was the unconscious subject of them, was not known; but at sight of him—particularly if he were seen, as frequently happened, in the rector’s neighborhood—people shrugged their shoulders and lifted their eyebrows, and expressed a great many severe things without using their tongues. To the circle of the rector’s personal friends the rumors did not reach. That was natural enough. To tell a person that his or her intimate friend is a forger or a swindler is a piquant but somewhat perilous task. And no one mentioned the matter to the Hammonds, or to the archdeacon, or to the Homfrays of Holberton, or the other county people living round, with whom it must be confessed that, after that dinner-party at the Town House, he consorted perhaps too exclusively. It might have been thought that even the townsfolk, seeing the young fellow’s frank face passing daily about their streets, and catching the glint of his fair curly hair when, the wintry sunlight pierced the lanthorn windows and fell in gules and azure on the reading-desk, would have been slow to believe such tales of him. They might have been; but circumstances and Mr. Bonamy were against him. The lawyer did not circulate the stories; he had not even mentioned them out-of-doors, nor, for aught the greater part of Claversham knew, had heard of them at all. But all his weight—and with the Low-Church middle-class in the town it was great—was thrown into the scale against the rector. It was known that he did not trust the rector. It was known that day by day his frown on meeting the rector grew darker and darker. And the why and the wherefore not being understood—for no one thought of questioning the lawyer, or observed how frequently of late the curate happened upon him in the street or the reading-room—many concluded that he knew more of the clergyman’s antecedents than appeared.