A YOUNG miller who had succeeded to his father’s business, made flour for the people of his native village, and also for the farmers of the country around, receiving for his pay, or toll, one-tenth of the grain that he ground. He measured this out in a round box—called a “toll-dish”—which contained just one-tenth of a bushel.

Among his customers was an old farmer who, having his farm all paid for and well stocked, with some money out at interest beside, was looked upon by his neighbors as a rich man. He used to come about once a fortnight to the mill, bringing four or five bags of wheat to be ground.

One day, after the old man had left, as the miller began pouring his wheat into the hopper, the thought occurred to him that if he should take a little more than a tenth the farmer would never miss it.

“Other millers do it,” said he, “and so might I as well. Beside, I will make it up to him by extra care in grinding his flour.”

So, after he had taken out the tenth that he was entitled to, he filled the toll-dish twice again and emptied the contents into a barrel of his own wheat that stood near.

But the miller did not feel altogether satisfied with what he had done. The thought of it disquieted him more than once. Yet he could not quite persuade himself to put the wheat back.

“I think I’m fairly entitled to something more,” he said, “from such a rich man.”

Then a bright thought struck him. There was in the mill some corn that belonged to a widow. She had wheeled it there in a barrow—poor woman!—with her own hands, and left it to be ground into meal.

“I’ll take something less than my full toll from her,” he said, “and so will make matters square by remembering the poor.”

This seemed for a time to overcome his scruples, and, having made a beginning, he gradually increased the extra toll that he took from the rich farmer, but soon discontinued making any allowance on his poor customer’s grist.

But, though the miller had made a correct calculation concerning the farmer—viz., that he would not miss what was unjustly taken from him—he had made a wrong estimate of his own conscience. He found by thus testing it that it was not of the sort to heal while he kept on wounding it afresh, or to accept as true what he knew to be false. It was rather of the kind that we find it so inconvenient to have when we want to do wrong and still be as comfortable as if we were doing right.

The miller was in the habit of going to the village church on a Sunday, where he sat in the pew with his wife and little children, taking part in the service and listening to the minister’s sermon. But now, whenever the eighth commandment was repeated, or so much as alluded to, he grew restless and uneasy and anxious for the service to be over.

On week-days the stage-driver, as he passed the mill door, threw out a newspaper that the miller subscribed for, and it had long been his favorite pastime, as the great water-wheel was revolving and the millstones were grinding, to sit among the bags of grain in his flour-besprinkled clothes and read his paper through and through. But of late he found himself avoiding all paragraphs headed: “Defalcation,” “Embezzlement,” “Breach of Trust,” “Conscience Fund.”

Now and then he stumbled on an account that was published there of some honest debtor who as soon as he was able paid up his back debts, or of some repentant thief who made restitution of the things he had stolen. This was unpleasant reading to the miller.

In the village there lived a man who had done just the reverse of these things, and in consequence bore a bad name. The miller disliked to meet this man. Occasionally he had to go on business to the county-town, and on his way passed the jail. Peering through the bars he often saw the evil countenances of the prisoners.

“What are they in there for, I wonder?” he said to himself. “The truth is I deserve to be there with them.”

And this finding of a rebuke in whatever he came across went on until everything about him seemed to join in a dreadful chorus, accusing him of his crime.

But at last the load on his conscience became too heavy, and he could bear it no longer. But what should he do to get rid of it? To confess his guilt would crush him to the earth. There was but one thing more dreadful, and that was to go on hiding it. But was there no way of escaping an open confession? Ah! happy thought! This would not be necessary. The farmer was still confidingly bringing his grain every two weeks to the mill.

“I will go over my accounts,” said the miller, “and add up to the last pound all I have ever taken from him, and this I will return gradually, from time to time, with his flour, in quantities that will not be noticed; so I shall pay my debt and clear my conscience without being even suspected of wrong.”

Having made this resolve, he longed to put it in practice, and could hardly wait for the next appearance of the farmer’s wagon. In a few days, however, it drove up to the mill door as usual. The miller with a glad heart (which he was careful to conceal) carried the bags it was loaded with into the mill, and bade the farmer a cheerful “Good-bye” as he drove away.

“Now,” he said, “I will take out of this grinding a part of my toll, lest, if I should take none, the difference may be noticed and some inquiry made.”

So he filled the toll-dish three times instead of six, as he was entitled to, and ground up the rest of the wheat.

But while he was thus carrying out, in secret, his plan at the mill, he little suspected how matters stood at the farmhouse. The farmer’s wife, who was a more shrewd observer than himself in such things as came directly under her charge, had noticed for some time past that the returns from the mill seemed short in weight, and at length she confided her suspicions to her husband.

“Nonsense!” said he. “I’ve known the miller all his life, and his father before him: his father had a conscience, and so has he.”

“Well,” replied his wife, “there’s one way of testing it that neither you nor anybody else can object to. I weighed what we last sent him; now we’ll weigh what he sends back to us.”

As the farmer could find no fault with this proposal, he called it a bargain, and the next day went to the mill for the grinding. The miller received him gladly and hastened to carry out his grist to the wagon. As he drove homeward the farmer said to himself:

“How strange that wife should speak so about the flour! But women do sometimes take up such queer notions. I’ll be bound, now, that she will be waiting, when I get home, to have the bags put on the scales as soon as they are unloaded.”

He was not wrong. As he drove through the gate around to the side porch his wife appeared in her great white apron, hardly able to keep quiet until the wagon was backed up, and as the bags were taken out of it they were laid, one by one, on the scales that stood near.

“How does it come out, wife?” cried the farmer as she set down the pounds contained in the last bag.

But she kept on going over the figures again and again without answering, at which the old man put on his spectacles and hastily footed them up.

“Didn’t I tell you so?” he exclaimed, with a reproachful look for her and a triumphant one for himself. “Why, instead of cheating us, he has cheated himself! What a pity it is for a woman to be suspicious!”

“Don’t brag too soon,” said his wife, piqued at his words; “you’d better put that off till we’ve weighed another grinding.”

The hungry mouths on the farm soon demanded a fresh supply of flour, and before many weeks had passed another load of wheat, after being weighed with extra care, was hauled to the mill. The miller, in the mean time having found some relief to his conscience by the little he had already done, was more eager than ever to carry out his plan and remove his burden altogether.

“It is certain,” he said, “they have not noticed anything unusual in the last grist. I might just as well hurry matters up a little. This time I’ll take out no toll at all, and after this will begin adding some of my own flour.”

Putting off other farmers who had brought their grain before him, the miller ground the old man’s wheat first, out of its turn, and sent him word it was ready. His wife, still smarting under the charge of being unjustly suspicious, hurried him away after it, and waited his return even more anxiously than she had for the former load. It came in due time, and was promptly laid on the scales as the other had been. But if she was surprised before, she was dumb with wonder now, and her husband—who, in truth, thought there was no better woman—seeing her embarrassment, was considerate enough to do no more than join in expressing his astonishment at the unlooked-for result. The flour was quietly put away in the store-room, and other matters requiring attention about the farmhouse were looked after.

That evening, just before bedtime, as they sat together in their old-fashioned comfortable kitchen, the farmer said to his wife:

“I’ve been thinking about that last grist. There must be something the matter with our young miller’s scales, and you know that we don’t want to take without paying for it what belongs to him. I mean to go over to the mill to-morrow on purpose to look into it.”

“That’s exactly what I want you to do,” replied his wife, seriously. “Short of weight more than once I know the grinding was, and over-weight twice we both know it was; the thing keeps worrying my mind, and troubling me.”

The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, the farmer harnessed up his horses and drove to the mill. The miller, who was standing in the door, looked surprised to see him when there was neither wheat to bring nor flour to haul away. And not only surprised: there came a look of apprehension over his face, for there is always a lurking fear of evil in the heart that is conscious of hiding some wrong.

“I don’t believe you can guess what I’ve come over about,” cried the farmer as he got down from the wagon.

The miller said nothing.

“Did you weigh the last grinding?” asked the old man.

“Yes.”

“And the one before that?”

“Yes.”

“And don’t you know they weighed too much? But perhaps you wanted to make us a present,” he continued, good-humoredly, “or maybe, as winter is coming on, you thought we stood in need.”

The miller’s face grew scarlet. He attempted to speak, but his voice stuck in his throat and he could not utter a word. Perceiving at a glance that he was in trouble, the farmer’s manner changed.

“Tell me all about it,” he said. “I was your father’s friend, and am yours.”

Then the miller took the old man into the mill, and, shutting the door, told him, in a trembling voice, the whole sad story.

“I’ve found out,” he said, “that the wrong way is a hard way, and I’m in that way yet, but I long to get out of it. I’d give this mill—yes, and all that is in it—were that needful to make me feel myself once more an honest man. I have set it all aside. Those bags over there contain every pound I have ever taken. But I shall never know a happy moment till I see them hauled away from here and put into your barn.”

“My dear young friend,” said the farmer, drawing his sleeve across his eyes, “I care nothing for the flour, yet it is mine, and it is right I should take it. Carry it out yourself and load it on the wagon, and I’ll soon put it where you want it to be. I believe you have been taught, by the best of teachers, such a lesson as you’ll never forget. And be assured that after it I will never fear to trust you. Take my word for it, too, that no one but wife—and she can keep a secret—shall ever hear of this.”

The next Sunday the miller went to church, and, whatever else he might dread to hear about, it was not the eighth commandment. And the following week, and for many a week afterward, he read his newspaper as he did in former times—all through, skipping nothing, from beginning to end.

The way out of the path of uprightness is smooth and easy; the way back to it, rough and difficult. The one is ever open to the erring, but the other is never closed against the penitent.