hich was your own? The price of the
shoes, too, you might have kept, for your honesty did not save you
from a beating. Why did you say anything about it'! I would have taken
the beating and kept the money."

We have mentioned how Will met and triumphed over the first
temptation; and when Taylor had repeatedly afterward assailed him with
like arguments, he had never wavered; and the only consequence of his
advice had been to create dislike and mistrust of one who could
advocate a practice so entirely at variance with the law of God. But
now he listened to the tempter, and without reproof of the sin which
he could not fail to recognise.

"After all," said he to himself, "Jem Taylor is right; I get beaten
whether I am honest or not, and that money would have bought me many
nice things. Yes, and I am so often hungry; and when I see the street
boys spending pennies at the cake stalls and I have nothing, it makes
me so angry; and I cannot bear this old Walters. I know I will not be
so foolish another time; but I will keep at least the money which is
given to myself, and take good care he shall know nothing about it."

And why was his frame of mind so changed? Why did he view the
deception as less repulsive than at first? The reason is easily told:
he had relaxed his watchfulness in adhering to the path of duty, and
although careful still to say the prayer taught him by those whose
memory was as vividly dear as ever, it was more the form of words than
the heart-prompted petition. Alas! the poisonous influence around him
was beginning to tell, and he would soon throw off the only armour
that could shield him from the temptations of the wicked, or guard
against the more insidious attacks of his own deceiving and deceitful
heart. He was not more happy, although in liking Jem Taylor better he
had become more, reckless, and listened to his advice more patiently
than at first; and although he still prayed, "Lead me not into
temptation, but deliver me from evil," he did not take in its
spiritual meaning, and forgot the Saviour's injunction to "watch" as
well as "pray."

But God, who knows all man's weakness, and whose mercy exceeds even
man's sin, raised up at this time a friend for the desolate boy--it
seemed as though to preserve him from the peril with which he was
menaced. There were but one or two of the neighbours who ever visited
the Walters, for the master was too surly and the mistress too
penurious to exchange hospital