aved on the
palms of his hands, and written with corroding ink on the fleshly
tables of his heart. As he turned over the well-thumbed pages he
made many mental calculations, sometimes smiling and sometimes
sighing as his eye fell on an irreclaimable debt. Then, taking up
his pencil, he entered an account on the fly-sheet of the Bible,
and seemed satisfied when he discovered that his illness would not
involve him in the loss which he had anticipated; and smiling the
smile of selfish gain, he closed his eyes and slept.

Poor Moses Fletcher! For with all his riches he was poor--if being
a pauper in the sight of Heaven is to be poor. How he had lived to
make money, and, having made it, how terrible was the cost! Old
Mr. Morell once told him that the angels reversed his balance year
by year, writing in invisible ink against his material profits his
moral and spiritual depreciation. And yet there was one redeeming
feature in the character of Moses--he loved his dog. 'Captain,' as
the brute was called, kept one spot warm in his callous nature, a
little patch of vegetation on the bare surface of his granite
heart. The only noble acts in the life of Moses Fletcher were acts
wrought on behalf of this dog. Years ago he risked his life to
save it, when, as a whelp, mischievous boys sought to drown it in
the Green Fold Lodge; and only a week or two ago he rescued it
from the infuriated grip of a bull-terrier, at the expense of
injuries from which he was now slowly recovering. Wherever Moses
went he was followed by his dog; and if the dog was seen alone it
was known Moses was not far distant. Now, this dog had to suffer
for Moses' sins. It was, as Mr. Penrose used to say, 'a vicarious
dog'--the innocent bearing the sins of the guilty. Affectionate,
faithful, gentle, with no spice of viciousness in its nature, it
was none the less stoned by children and tormented by man and
woman alike. One of Moses' debtors, a stalwart quarryman, once
took it on the moors and sent it home with a spray of prickly
holly tied under its tail. On another occasion, an Irish labourer,
whom Moses put in the County Court, hurled a handful of quicklime
in its eye, by which its sight had been in part destroyed; and its
glossy skin was all patched with bare spots where outraged
housewives had doused it with scalding water.

'We cornd get at _him_,' they used to say, 'but we con get at his
dog, and mak' him smart i' that road.'

The last outrage, however, wa