"For all you care, no doubt," said the stranger to himself. "Men
often speak their real thoughts in a passion."

"Do you see that little white cottage away off there, just at the
edge of the wood? Two tall poplars stand in front."

Thus spoke to the stranger one who had heard him address the
landlord.

"I do. What of it?" he answered.

"The man you asked for lives there."

"Indeed!"

"And what is more, if he keeps on as he has begun, the cottage will
be all his own in another year. Jenks, here, doesn't feel any good
blood for him, as you may well believe. A poor man's prosperity is
regarded as so much loss to him. Leslie is a good mechanic--one of
the best in Milanville. He can earn twelve dollars a week, year in
and year out. Two hundred dollars he has already paid on his
cottage; and as he is that much richer, Jenks thinks himself just so
much poorer; for all this surplus, and more too, would have gone
into his till, if Leslie had not quit drinking."

"Aha! I see! Well, did Leslie, as you call him, ever try to get a
drink here, since the landlord promised never to let him have
another drop?"

"Twice to my knowledge."

"And he refused him?"

"Yes. If you remember, he said, in his anger, '_May I be cursed_, if
I sell him another drop.'"

"I remember it very well."

"That saved poor Leslie. Jenks is superstitious in some things. He
wanted to get his custom again,--for it was well worth having,--and he
was actually handing him the bottle one day, when I saw it, and
reminded him of his self-imprecation. He hesitated, looked
frightened, withdrew the bottle from the counter, and then, with
curses, drove Leslie from his bar-room, threatening, at the same
time, to horsewhip him if ever he set a foot over his threshold
again."

"Poor drunkards!" mused the stranger, as he rode past the neat
cottage of the reformed man a couple of hours afterwards. "As the
case now stands, you are only saved as by fire. All law, all
protection, is on the side of those who are engaged in enticing you
into sin, and destroying you, body and soul. In their evil work,
they have free course. But for you, unhappy wretches, after they
have robbed you of worldly goods, and even manhood itself, are
provided prisons and pauper homes! And for your children,"--a dark
shadow swept over the stranger's face, and a shudder went through
his frame. "Can it be, a Christian country in which I live, and such
things darken the very sun at noonday!"