"When all was discovered, and Willing's guilt clearly proved, he was summoned to meet his injured employers. He must have gone with quakings of heart: but not even then did his cool assurance fail him, or the blush rise to his cheek, until he was made conscious that all his trickery was understood, and that public exposure and the penitentiary were before him. Then he gave way, and confessed all. He had not, in the beginning, planned deliberate villany--very few ever do who have been brought up to know the right. But the temptations to extravagance had proved too much for him, and his principles, never strong, had given way. He had taken two hundred dollars, intending to return it from his salary, and none should be the wiser. But fast living is a deceitful thing--almost as deceitful as the human heart. Bills came in fast--store bills, butchers' bills, carriage bills, confectionery bills, milliners' bills--swallowing up his quarter's salary; and one must have ready money, you know; so instead of returning what he had taken, as hope had whispered, he took more--still to be repaid in the future. "I need hardly say, that each time he yielded to temptation the resistance of his conscience became less and less, until finally it appeared to be paralyzed. He had woven the toils about himself until he seemed powerless to escape; no chrysalis, apparently lifeless in its silky shroud, was feebler than he. He was strong to do evil but weak to do good. Everything conspired to push him down hill--circumstances were against him, he thought--but one thing was certain, he must have money, and then all would be right. "But how to break the meshes? How to retrieve himself? One way only was clear to him--speculation in stocks, and on a margin; he could borrow money for that, for he would be sure to repay. _Borrowing_ was now the convenient name he applied to his stealing. He tried it, and at first succeeded; the deluded victims of all gambling, whether in the Exchange or in gambling hells, are pretty sure of success at first; and so they are enticed to higher ventures. Now he might have returned the ill-gotten money, and at least have saved his reputation. But no! the gambling passion was now aroused, and he felt sure he could soon realize enough to make him easy. He tried again and for a larger sum and _lost_. "And so he went on until he was tangled inextricably in the net, and felt that he was a rascal, and a lost, not a successful one. Remorse seized him, but not repentance; for still he went on in his guilt. Indeed, he was more reckless than ever, struggling to get out of the meshes. Gay to excess at times, then gloomy; his temper became unequal, and to drown reflection he sometimes drank to excess. He was a ruined man--ruined _before_ exposure, for that only opened the eyes of others--his own down-fall had already taken place.