"What did you come in here for, Allen?"
"Shoplifting, ma'am."
"With your husband earning three dollars a day you had no excuse; that was enough to keep you comfortably."
"So it would, ma'am, if I had been contented. I don't know what made me,—I got a hankering for it. It was eighteen years ago, I was going out to buy me a silk dress, and one of my comrades went with me. I stood looking at a piece of silk, and was going to buy it. She touched my shoulder, 'don't buy that till we look in another store!' When we got out she showed me a piece of silk that she had under her shawl. She got it while I was looking at the other. After that we used to go together."
"Did you ever get caught before?"
"Yes, ma'am; I was in here seven years ago."
"And for eighteen years you have followed that wicked life, constantly, and never got caught but twice."
"I never stole from the poor. It was from those that could well afford to spare it. I always took the richest of silks and satins and velvets and linens. Sometimes I had seven or eight hundred dollars' worth at a time."
There was an exhibition of pride in her statement.
The larger the crime, the more honorable, she thought. A strange code of honesty, but a very common one, it would be found, if the practical principles of every person were subjected to analysis.