not run in a quiet stream. Something disturbed
their current, for his brow was knit, his compressed lips had a
disturbed motion, and his hands moved about at times uneasily. At
length he arose, not hurriedly, but with a deliberate motion, threw
his arms behind him, and, bending forward, with his eyes cast down,
paced the length of the store two or three times, backward and
forward, slowly.

"Fifty dollars profit in one day," he at length said, half audibly.
"That will do, certainly. I'd be contented with a tenth part of the
sum. He's bound to get rich; that's plain. Fifty dollars in a single
day! Leonard Jasper, you're a shrewd one. I shall have to lay aside
some of my old-fashioned squeamishness, and take a few lessons from so
accomplished a teacher. But, he's a downright cheat!"

Some better thought had swept suddenly, in a gleam of light, across
the young man's mind, showing him the true nature of the principles
from which the merchant acted, and, for the moment, causing his whole
nature to revolt against them. But the light faded slowly; a state of
darkness and confusion followed, and then the old current of thought
moved on as before.

Slowly, and now with an attitude of deeper abstraction, moved the
young man backward and forward the entire length of the room, of which
he was the sole occupant. He _felt_ that he was alone, that no human
eye could note a single movement. Of the all-seeing Eye he thought
not--his spirit's evil counsellors, drawn intimately nigh to him
through inclinations to evil, kept that consciousness from his mind.

At length Claire turned to the desk upon which were the account-books
that had been used during the day, and commenced turning the leaves of
one of them in a way that showed only a half-formed purpose. There was
an impulse to something in his mind; an impulse not yet expressed in
any form of thought, though in the progress toward something definite.

"Fifty dollars a day!" he murmurs. Ah, that shows the direction of his
mind. He is still struggling in temptation, and with all his inherited
cupidities bearing him downward.

Suddenly he starts, turns his head, and listens eagerly, and with a
strange agitation. Some one had tried the door. For a few moments he
stood in an attitude of the most profound attention. But the trial was
not repeated. How audibly, to his own ears, throbbed his heart! How
oppressed was his bosom! How, in a current of fire, rushed the blood
to his over-exc