True Riches | Page 3

struggling in temptation, and with all his inherited
cupidities bearing him downward.
Suddenly he starts, turns his head, and listens eagerly, and with a
strange agitation. Some one had tried the door. For a few moments he
stood in an attitude of the most profound attention. But the trial was not
repeated. How audibly, to his own ears, throbbed his heart! How
oppressed was his bosom! How, in a current of fire, rushed the blood to
his over-excited brain!
The hand upon the door was but an ordinary occurrence. It might now

be only a customer, who, seeing a light within, hoped to supply some
neglected want, or a friend passing by, who wished for a few words of
pleasant gossip. At any other time Claire would have stepped quickly
and with undisturbed expectation to receive the applicant for admission.
But guilty thoughts awakened their nervous attendants, suspicion and
fear, and these had sounded an instant alarm.
Still, very still, sat Edward Claire, even to the occasional suppression of
his breathing, which, to him, seemed strangely loud.
Several minutes elapsed, and then the young man commenced silently
to remove the various account-books to their nightly safe deposite in
the fire-proof. The cash-box, over the contents of which he lingered,
counting note by note and coin by coin, several times repeated, next
took its place with the books. The heavy iron door swung to, the key
traversed noiselessly the delicate and complicated wards, was removed
and deposited in a place of safety; and, yet unrecovered from his mood
of abstraction, the clerk left the store, and took his way homeward.
From that hour Edward Claire was to be the subject of a fierce
temptation. He had admitted an evil suggestion, and had warmed it in
the earth of his mind, even to germination. Already a delicate root had
penetrated the soil, and was extracting food therefrom. Oh! why did he
not instantly pluck it out, when the hand of an infant would have
sufficed in strength for the task? Why did he let it remain, shielding it
from the cold winds of rational truth and the hot sun of good affections,
until it could live, sustained by its own organs of appropriation and
nutrition? Why did he let it remain until its lusty growth gave sad
promise of an evil tree, in which birds of night find shelter and build
nests for their young?
Let us introduce another scene and another personage, who will claim,
to some extent, the reader's attention.
There were two small but neatly, though plainly, furnished rooms, in
the second story of a house located in a retired street. In one of these
rooms tea was prepared, and near the tea-table sat a young woman,
with a sleeping babe nestled to-her bosom. She was fair-faced and
sunny-haired; and in her blue eyes lay, in calm beauty, sweet tokens of

a pure and loving heart. How tenderly she looked down, now and then,
upon the slumbering cherub whose winning ways and murmurs of
affection had blessed her through the day! Happy young wife! these are
thy halcyon days. Care has not thrown upon thee a single shadow from
his gloomy wing, and hope pictures the smiling future with a sky of
sunny brightness.
"How long he stays away!" had just passed her lips, when the sound of
well-known footsteps was heard in the passage below. A brief time, and
then the room-door opened, and Edward Claire came in. What a depth
of tenderness was in his voice as he bent his lips to those of his young
wife, murmuring--
"My Edith!" and then touching, with a gentler pressure, the white
forehead of his sleeping babe.
"You were late this evening, dear," said Edith, looking into the face of
her husband, whose eyes drooped under her earnest gaze.
"Yes," he replied, with a slight evasion in his tone and manner; "we
have been busier than usual to-day."
As he spoke the young wife arose, and taking her slumbering child into
the adjoining chamber, laid it gently in its crib. Then returning, she
made the tea--the kettle stood boiling by the grate--and in a little while
they sat down to their evening meal.
Edith soon observed that her husband was more thoughtful and less
talkative than usual. She asked, however, no direct question touching
this change; but regarded what he did say with closer attention, hoping
to draw a correct inference, without seeming to notice his altered mood.
"Mr. Jasper's business is increasing?" she said, somewhat
interrogatively, while they still sat at the table, an expression of her
husband's leading to this remark.
"Yes, increasing very rapidly," replied Claire, with animation. "The
fact is, he is going to get rich. Do you know that his profit on to-day's

sales amounted to fifty dollars?"