'For six-and-thirty years that you have been in this world,' said be, 'through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall.

Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft.

Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder.

Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil ?--five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you.' 'It is true,' Markheim said huskily, 'I have in some degree complied with evil.

But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings.' 'I will propound to you one simple question,' said the other; 'and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope.