Mr. Smith was invariably haunted by his own
lineaments at various ages as in a dusty mirror. After poring several
minutes over one of these blurred and almost indistinguishable
pictures, he began to see that the painter had intended to represent
him, now in the decline of life, as stripping the clothes from the
backs of three half-starved children. "Really, this puzzles me!" quoth
Mr. Smith, with the irony of conscious rectitude. "Asking pardon of
the painter, I pronounce him a fool as well as a scandalous knave. A
man of my standing in the world to be robbing little children of their
clothes! Ridiculous!"

But while he spoke Memory had searched her fatal volume and found a
page which with her sad calm voice she poured into his ear. It was not
altogether inapplicable to the misty scene. It told how Mr. Smith had
been grievously tempted by many devilish sophistries, on the ground of
a legal quibble, to commence a lawsuit against three orphan-children,
joint-heirs to a considerable estate. Fortunately, before he was quite
decided, his claims had turned out nearly as devoid of law as justice.
As Memory ceased to read Conscience again thrust aside her mantle, and
would have struck her victim with the envenomed dagger only that he
struggled and clasped his hands before his heart. Even then, however,
he sustained an ugly gash.

Why should we follow Fancy through the whole series of those awful
pictures? Painted by an artist of wondrous power and terrible
acquaintance with the secret soul, they embodied the ghosts of all the
never-perpetrated sins that had glided through the lifetime of Mr.
Smith. And could such beings of cloudy fantasy, so near akin to
nothingness, give valid evidence against him at the day of judgment?
Be that the case or not, there is reason to believe that one truly
penitential tear would have washed away each hateful picture and left
the canvas white as snow. But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too
keen to be endured, bellowed aloud with impatient agony, and suddenly
discovered that his three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a
silver-haired and highly-venerated old man, in the rich gloom of the
crimsoned-curtained room, with no box of pictures on the table, but
only a decanter of most excellent Madeira. Yet his heart still seemed
to fester with the venom of the dagger.

Nevertheless, the unfortunate old gentleman might have argued the
matter with Conscience and alleged many reasons wherefore s