ague,
troubled sense of approaching evil. She felt that there was danger in
the path of her husband; but of its nature she could divine little
or nothing. All day her dream had haunted her; and now it reproduced
itself in her imagination with painful distinctness. Vainly she strove
to drive it from her thoughts; it would not be gone. Slowly the hours
wore on for her, until the deepening twilight brought the period
when her husband was to return again. To this return her mind looked
forward with an anxiety that could not be repressed.

The dreaded meeting with his wife over, Claire thought with less
repugnance of what he had done, and was rather inclined to justify
than condemn himself.

"It's the way of the world," so he argued; "and unless I do as the
world does, I must remain where I am--at the bottom of the ladder. But
why should I stay below, while all around me are struggling upward? As
for what preachers and moralists call strictly fair dealing, it may be
all well enough in theory, pleasant to talk about, and all that; but
it won't do in practice, as the world now is. Where each is grasping
all that he can lay his hands on, fair or foul, one must scramble
with the rest, or get nothing. That is so plain that none can deny the
proposition. So, Edward Claire, if you wish to rise above your present
poor condition, if you wish to get rich, like your enterprising
neighbours, you must do as they do. If I go in for a lamb, I might as
well take a sheep: the morality of the thing is the same. If I take a
large slice off of a customer, why shall not a portion of that slice
be mine; ay, the whole of it, if I choose to make the appropriation?
All Jasper can fairly ask, is a reasonable profit: if I, by my
address, get more than this, surely I may keep a part thereof. Who
shall say nay?"

Justifying himself by these and similar false reasonings, the young
man thrust aside the better suggestions, from which he was at first
inclined to retrace the false step he had taken; and wilfully shutting
his eyes, resolved to go forward in his evil and dangerous course.

During the afternoon of that day a larger number of customers than
usual were in, and Claire was very busily occupied. He made three or
four large sales, and was successful in getting several dollars in
excess of fair profit from one not very well skilled in prices. In
making an entry of this particular transaction in the memorandum
sales-book, the figures recorded were