A CERTAIN man who owned a lot of ground determined to build a house on it. There was a good quarry in his lot, but to get the stone out of it required hard labor. This, however, was all that was needed; so he went to work with a good will, and made a prosperous beginning. First he laid the foundation, and then several courses of the superstructure. But the toil was severe, the wall progressed slowly, and the work grew wearisome.

One day, while digging in his quarry, he discovered a[217]
[218] new vein of stone, which ran over his neighbor’s line, and he picked up a block of it that came easily into his hand. He found that it was more easily worked than his own, and that he could almost save the labor of squaring, and dressing, by using it. The next day he took out some more, until he had taken enough to lay one course of it all around the walls of his house. But this carried him so far into his neighbor’s premises that he dared go no farther; he filled up the opening he had made with rubbish and earth, and went to work again on his own land. Months, and even years, passed by; but he worked on faithfully, day by day, and at last his house was finished. Then he furnished it comfortably, and, taking his family with him, moved into it, to stay there for the rest of his days.

Now, while his hands were busy and his mind engaged in building, he never once thought of the course of stone that he had taken from his neighbor. But after all was done, and his long task completed, as he stood one day in front of his house, admiring it, he observed that course. It had settled into a different color from the rest—not so different as to be noticed by others, but enough to make it evident to himself. He found the next day, as he passed through his garden, that he saw it again; and after that it seemed to stand out conspicuously whenever his face was turned toward his home. This began to annoy[219]
[220] him. It was only one course, to be sure; there were full fifty courses in the wall between the roof and the foundation. Why did this single one attract his attention before all the rest? His conscience answered the question. It did not rightly belong there; it never had been, and was not now, his own.

A year passed from the time when his house was finished, then another and another. It was astonishing how quickly they sped. Yet there was not a day in all those years that his eye did not, some time between the rising and the setting of the sun, rest on that course of stone.

At length old age crept on. He had time now to sit still and think of the past, and he did not sleep at night as he used to. But both by day and by night the course of stone was in his mind. Most willingly he would have gone to his neighbor and paid him ten times its value (for he had prospered and grown rich), but in doing so he would have confessed himself a thief and disgraced his family for ever; he could not do this. Or gladly he would have torn it from his walls and placed it back in the quarry from whence he had taken it, but that was impossible. So he lived on, brooding over it until it drove all better and happier thoughts out of his mind, and at last he died, bowed down and crushed, as it were, under its weight.

There is an interest account, so to speak, running on against every amount, be it small or great, that we have ever gotten dishonestly. And the worst of it is that if it be not settled now we shall find it still standing and accumulating in the long hereafter.