WEALTH WITHOUT WINGS. 11

 

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 ac-
complished 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, show-
ing 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 confu-
sion followed, and then the old current of thought
moved on as before.

Slowly, and now with an attitude of deeper ab-
straction, 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 some-
thing definite.

“Fifty dollars a day!’ he murmurs. Ah, that
shows the direction of his mind. He is still strug-