"Let me examine it." Lee took the bill, and added up the column three times before he felt entirely satisfied. Then he said,
"So it does! Well, I should never have been the wiser if you had only paid me the eighty dollars called for by the bill. You might have retained your advantage with perfect safety."
Lee said this on the impulse of the moment. He instantly saw a change in Mr. Clinton's countenance, as if he were slightly offended.
"Oh, no; not with safety," was gravely replied.
"I never should have found it out."
"But there is coming a day, with every man, when the secrets of his heart will stand revealed. If not now, it would then appear that I had wronged you out of twenty dollars."
"True! true! But all men don't think of this."
"No one is more fully aware of that than I am. It is for me, however, to live in the present so as not to burden my future with shame and repentance. Knowingly, Mr. Lee, I would not wrong any man out of a single dollar. I may err, and do err, like other men; for, to err is human."
After the expression of such sentiments, Lee felt curious to know what Mr. Clinton thought of, and how he felt towards Maxwell. So he said, after referring to the new mill-dam in the process of erection—
"You didn't take the lowest bid for its construction."