wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me

for a thing that surely must be common as humanity--the unwilling

sinner?'

'All this is very feelingly expressed,' was the reply, 'but it regards me

not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care not

in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as you

are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the servant

delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the

hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as if

the gallows itself was striding towards you through the Christmas

streets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to

find the money?'

'For what price?' asked Markheim.

'I offer you the service for a Christmas gift,' returned the other.

Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph.

'No,' said he, 'I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of

thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should

find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing

to commit myself to evil.'

'I have no objection to a death-bed repentance,' observed the visitant.

'Because you disbelieve their efficacy!' Markheim cried.

'I do not say so,' returned the other; 'but I look on these things from a

different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man has

lived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or to

sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliance

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