p to a certain point in his
history, but then a crisis, by them unperceived, perhaps to them
inappreciable, arrived, after which the man to all eternity could never be
the same as they had known him. Such a change must appear improbable, and
save on the theory of a higher operative power is improbable because
impossible. But a man who has not created himself can never secure himself
against the inroad of the glorious terror of that Goodness which was able
to utter him into being, with all its possible wrongs and repentances. The
fact that a man has never, up to any point yet, been aware of aught beyond
himself cannot shut Him out who is beyond him, when at last He means to
enter. Not even the soul-benumbing visits of his clerical minister could
repress the swell of the slow-mounting dayspring in the soul of the hard,
commonplace, business-worshiping man, Hector Crathie. The hireling would
talk to him kindly enough--of his illness or of events of the day,
especially those of the town and neighborhood, and encourage him with
reiterated expression of the hope that ere many days they would enjoy a
tumbler together as of old; but as to wrong done, apology to make,
forgiveness to be sought or consolation to be found, the dumb dog had not
uttered a bark.

The sources of the factor's restless discomfort were now two--the first,
that he had lifted his hand to women; the second, the old ground of his
quarrel with Malcolm brought up by Lizzy.

All his life, since ever he had had business, Mr. Crathie had prided
himself on his honesty, and was therefore in one of the most dangerous
moral positions a man could occupy--ruinous even to the honesty itself.
Asleep in the mud, he dreamed himself awake on a pedestal. At best, such a
man is but perched on a needlepoint when he thinketh he standeth. Of him
who prided himself on his honor I should expect that one day, in the long
run it might be, he would do some vile thing. Not, probably, within the
small circle of illumination around his wretched rushlight; but in the
great region beyond it, of what to him is a moral darkness or twilight
vague, he may be or may become capable of doing a deed that will stink in
the nostrils of the universe; and in his own when he knows it as it is.
The honesty in which a man can pride himself must be a small one, for mere
honesty will never think of itself at all. The limited honesty of the
factor clave to the interests of his employers, and let the rights