still silent; though he commenced promptly to
measure off the goods.

"Not dear at that price," remarked the lady.

"I think not," said the storekeeper. "I bought the case of goods
from which this piece was taken very low."

"Twenty yards at fifty-five cents! Just eleven dollars." The
customer opened her purse as she thus spoke, and counted out the sum
in glittering gold dollars. "That is right, I believe," and she
pushed the money towards Mr. Levering, who, with a kind of automatic
movement of his hand, drew forward the coin and swept it into his
till.

"Send the bundle to No. 300 Argyle Street," said the lady, with a
bland smile, as she turned from the counter, and the half-bewildered
store-keeper.

"Stay, madam! there is a slight mistake!" The words were in Mr.
Levering's thoughts, and on the point of gaining utterance, but he
had not the courage to speak. He had gained a dollar in the
transaction beyond his due, and already it was lying heavily on his
conscience. Willingly would he have thrown it off; but when about to
do so, the quick suggestion came, that, in acknowledging to the lady
the fact of her having paid five cents a yard too much, he might
falter in his explanation, and thus betray his attempt to do her
wrong. And so he kept silence, and let her depart beyond recall.

Any thing gained at the price of virtuous self-respect is acquired
at too large a cost. A single dollar on the conscience may press so
heavily as to bear down a man's spirits, and rob him of all the
delights of life. It was so in the present case. Vain was it that
Mr. Levering sought self-justification. Argue the matter as he
would, he found it impossible to escape the smarting conviction that
he had unjustly exacted a dollar from one of his customers. Many
times through the day he found himself in a musing, abstracted
state, and on rousing himself therefrom, became conscious, in his
external thought, that it was the dollar by which he was troubled.

"I'm very foolish," said he, mentally, as he walked homeward, after
closing his store for the evening. "Very foolish to worry myself
about a trifle like this. The goods were cheap enough at fifty-five,
and she is quite as well contented with her bargain as if she had
paid only fifty."

But it would not do. The dollar was on his conscience, and he sought
in vain to remove it by efforts of this kind.

Mr. Levering had a wife and three pleasant children. They were the
sunlight of his