t
I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and my
virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not
so; good, also, is a spring of acts."

But the visitant raised his finger. "For six and thirty years that you
have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune and
varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years
ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have
blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty
or meanness, from which you still recoil? Five years from now I shall
detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can
anything but death avail to stop you."

"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied
with evil. But it is so with all; the very saints, in the mere
exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
surroundings."

"I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as
you answer I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown
in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any
account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any
one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own
conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?"

"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. "No,"
he added, with despair; "in none! I have gone down in all."

"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for
you will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are
irrevocably written down."

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and, indeed, it was the visitor
who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show you
the money?"

"And grace?" cried Markheim.

"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago
did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your
voice the loudest in the hymn?"

"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by
way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are
opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."

At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house;
and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which he
had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.

"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarn