"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."

"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor, quietly.

5 "Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim. "That also you will lose," said the other.

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The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?" he exclaimed. Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of Io me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override the better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I do not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime 15 as murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart. And are my vices 20 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."

"For six-and

But the visitant raised his finger. thirty years that you have been in this world," said he, 25"through many changes of fortune and varieties of humor, 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 30 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 5 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 ro 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 15 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 writ- 20 ten 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?"

25

"and I see clearly 30 I thank you for

"It is true," said Markheim ; what remains for me by way of duty.

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 rung through the house; and the visitant, as though this 5 were some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.

"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say, is ill; 10 you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious

countenance--no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. 15 Thenceforward you have the whole evening-the whole night, if needful-to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he cried: "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the 20 scales; up, and act!"

Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open-I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I 25 be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temp

tation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your 30 galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage."

The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely change; they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened 5 the door and went down-stairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley-a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on 10 the further side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then 15 the bell once more broke out into impatient clamor..

He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.

"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed master."

your

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NOTES.

CHARLES LAMB.

Text. Modern texts of The Superannuated Man differ from the original of the London Magazine, May, 1825. Though complete variorum readings would here be wholly out of place, it is well in adopting the familiar current text to note briefly some of the more important deviations from the original. Disregarding variations of spelling and word-compounding and other minor changes, two differences may be considered briefly. (1) The original text is divided into two parts, the first headed with the quotation from Vergil; the second-beginning with the sentence, "A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communication "-headed with the quotation from O'Keefe. (2) The original text has an additional half-page in the next to the last paragraph. After the sentence concluding, "and what is it all for?" Lamb quotes five lines from Cowley and in full his own sonnet on "Work", while a few added prose sentences glorify still further "divine Leisure!" The insertion of a foot-note on the Puritan Sabbath and one or two other interesting variations in the text are referred to below.

Heading. Superannuated Man.-Simply "retired on pension". as for example: "Mr. John Dickens, the father, was superannuated in 1816, while yet in the prime of life, and allowed a pension,―according to the liberal practice in England.” —R. S. Mackenzie, Life of Dickens, chapter I.

The quotation is from Vergil: Eclogue I. 28, where the order of words is, "Libertas ; quæ sera, tamen respexit inertem.'

O'Keefe.-Almost certainly John O'Keeffe (1747–1833), an Irish dramatist who removed to London about 1780, and wrote frequent comic pieces for the Haymarket and Covent Garden theatres.