ule his own thoughts is king of himself: he that
never attempts it is `a reed driven with the wind and tossed.'"

"Oh, there you fly too high for me," said Haimet. "If my acts and words
are inoffensive, I have a right to my thoughts."

"Has any man a right to evil thoughts?" asked Gerhardt.

"What, you are one of those precise folks who make conscience of their
thoughts? I call that all stuff and nonsense," replied Haimet, throwing
down the hammer he was using.

"If I make no conscience of my thoughts, of what am I to make
conscience?" was the answer. "Thought is the seed, act the flower. If
you do not wish for the flower, the surest way is not to sow the seed.
Sow it, and the flower will blossom, whether you will or no."

"That sort of thing may suit you," said Haimet rather in an irritated
tone. "I could never get along, if I had to be always measuring my
thoughts with an ell-wand in that fashion."

"Do you prefer the consequences?" asked Gerhardt.

"Consequences!--what consequences?"

"Rather awkward ones, sometimes. Thoughts of hatred, for instance, may
issue in murder, and that may lead to your own death. If the thoughts
had been curbed in the first instance, the miserable results would have
been spared to all the sufferers. And `no man liveth to himself': it is
very seldom that you can bring suffering on one person only. It is
almost sure to run over to two or three more. And as the troubles of
every one of them will run over to another two or three, like circles in
the water, the sorrow keeps ever widening, so that the consequences of
one small act or word for evil are incalculable. It takes God to reckon
them."

"Eh, don't you, now!" said Isel with a shudder. "Makes me go all creepy
like, that does. I shouldn't dare to do a thing all the days of my
life, if I looked at every thing that way."

"Friend," said Gerhardt gravely, "these things _are_. It does not
destroy them to look away from them. It is not given to us to choose
whether we will act, but only how we will act. In some manner, for good
or for ill, act we must."

"I declare I won't listen to you, Gerard. I'm going creepy-crawly this
minute. Oh deary me! you do make things look just awful."

"Rubbish!" said Haimet, driving a nail into the wall with unnecessary
vehemence.

"It is the saying of a wise man, friends," remarked Gerhardt, "that `he
that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little.' And with
equal