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.”
