nly virtue worth cultivating, and idolatry must begin at home!

His efforts to improve his appearance were not satisfactory; the loss
of his toilet articles embarrassed him not a little; and he, moreover,
lacked zest to enter into the business with his customary care. And
what he did was done not merely for his own satisfaction, as
heretofore, but with an eye to the criticisms of other people. His
naively unconscious independence had got a blow. After doing his best
he went out, pale and heavy-eyed, the diamond ring on his finger.

The passengers had begun to assemble in the cabin. It seemed to
Helwyse, as he entered, that one and all turned and stared at him with
suspicious curiosity. He half expected to see an accuser rise up and
point a dreadful finger at him. But in truth the sensation he created
was no more than common; it was his morbid sensitiveness, which for
the first time took note of it. He had been accustomed to look at
himself as at a third person, in whose faults or successes he was
alike interested; but although his present mental attitude might have
moved him to smile, he, in fact, felt no such impulse. The hue of his
deed had permeated all possible forms of himself, thus barring him
from any standpoint whence to see its humorous aspect. The sun would
not shine on it!

As time passed on, however, and no one offered to denounce him,
Helwyse began to be more at ease. Seeing the steward with whom he had
spoken the night before, he asked him whereabouts he supposed the
schooner was.

"O, she'll be in by night, sir, safe enough. Wind's freshened up a
good bit since; wouldn't take her long to rig a new bowsprit. Beg
pardon, sir, did you happen to know the party next door to you?"

"I know no one. What about him?"

"Can't find him nowhere, sir. Door locked this morning; hadn't used
his bed; must have come aboard, for there was a violin lying on the
bed in a black box, for all the world like a coffin, sir. Queer, ain't
it?"

The steward was called away, but Helwyse's uneasiness had returned.
Did this fellow suspect nothing? The student of men could not read his
face; the power of insight seemed to have left him. Reason could tell
him that it was impossible he should be suspected, but reason no
longer satisfied him.

He left the cabin and once more sought the deck, harried and anxious.
Why could not he be stolid and indifferent, as were many worse
criminals than he? Or was his disquiet a gauge of his mo