e amount thus defrauded be notable, each is guilty of mortal sin.

We might here add in favor of children who take small things from their
parents and of wives who sometimes relieve their husbands of small
change, that it is natural that a man be less reluctant to being
defrauded in small matters by his own than by total Strangers. It is
only reasonable therefore that more latitude be allowed such
delinquents when there is question of computing the amount to be
considered notable; perhaps the amount might be doubled in their favor.
The same might be said in favor of those whose petty thefts are
directed against several victims instead of one, since the injury
sustained individually is less.

The best plan is to leave what does not belong to one severely alone.
In other sins there may be something gained in the long run, but here
no such illusion can be entertained, for the spectre of restitution, as
we shall see, follows every injustice as a shadow follows its object,
and its business is to see that no man profit by his ill-gotten goods.

CHAPTER LXXXVI.
AN OFT EXPLOITED, BUT SPECIOUS PLEA.

IT is not an infrequent occurrence for persons given to the habit of
petty thefts and fraud, to seek to justify their irregular conduct by a
pretense of justice which they call secret compensation. They stand
arraigned before the bar of their conscience on the charge of niching
small sums, usually from their employers; they have no will to desist;
they therefore plead not guilty, and have nothing so much at heart as
to convince themselves that they act within their rights. They
elaborate a theory of justice after their ideas, or rather, according
to their own desires; they bolster it up with facts that limp all the
way from half-truths to downright falsities; and thus acquit themselves
of sin, and go their way in peace. A judge is always lenient when he
tries his own case.

Secret compensation is the taking surreptitiously from another of the
equivalent of what is due to one, of what has been taken and is kept
against all justice, in order to indemnify oneself for losses
sustained. This sort of a thing, in theory at least, has a perfectly
plausible look, nor, in fact, is it contrary to justice, when all the
necessary conditions are fulfilled to the letter. But the cases in
which these conditions are fulfilled are so few and rare that they may
hardly be said to exist at all. It is extremely difficult to find such
A case, an