"Fifty dollars a day!" he murmurs. Ah, that shows the direction of his
mind. He is still 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.