to judge me by my acts! Think of it;
my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have
dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother--the giants of
circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look
within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not
see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any
wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me
for a thing that surely must be common as humanity--the unwilling
sinner?'

'All this is very feelingly expressed,' was the reply, 'but it regards me
not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care not
in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as you
are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the servant
delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the
hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as if
the gallows itself was striding towards you through the Christmas
streets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to
find the money?'

'For what price?' asked Markheim.

'I offer you the service for a Christmas gift,' returned the other.

Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph.
'No,' said he, 'I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of
thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should
find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing
to commit myself to evil.'

'I have no objection to a death-bed repentance,' observed the visitant.

'Because you disbelieve their efficacy!' Markheim cried.

'I do not say so,' returned the other; 'but I look on these things from a
different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man has
lived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or to
sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliance
with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can add
but one act of service--to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up
in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I am
not so hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please yourself in life
as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply, spread your elbows
at the board; and when the night begins to fall and the curtains to be
drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that