You cannot detect the approach to
such a resolve in your servant, and he, perhaps, can hardly detect it in
himself. But one day it is complete: he acts upon it. You are bereft of
your property; he flees, and there is the nine days' stir, and all is
over. Your greatest surety lies in your appreciation of your danger. I
have proved to you what that danger consists of; you did not know
before. Your best means of defence is to respect, to the fullest extent,
the people upon whom you depend. They are worthy of it. An instant's
reflection will show you that neither of you would be proof against a
strong temptation. For the sake of recovering a sum of money you have
compounded with felony. All of you are at this moment in breach of the
law. You have submitted without a struggle to the dominant impulse. The
principle of exact honor which you demand in me does not exist in
yourselves. But let us end this disagreeable scene. Perhaps I have
demonstrated something that you never realized. I hope you understand. I
now surrender to you the one hundred thousand dollars, which you
thought I had stolen.
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