t did not do even all
the evil that he might. What was the result of that long struggle of his
which always ended in failure? The failure was only apparent; the
success was this mighty one--that he did not go lower, he did not leave
Fentown Falls for the next town upon the river, a place called The
Mills, where his life could have been much worse. He fell in love with
Ann Markham; and although she was the daughter of the wickedest man in
Fentown, she was--according to the phraseology of the place--"a lady."
She kept a small beer-shop that was neat and clean; she lived so that no
man dared to say an uncivil word to her or to the sister whom she
protected. She did for her father very much what Bart's father did for
him: she kept a decent house over his head and decent clothes upon his
back, and threw a mantle of thrifty respectability over him.

Ann was no prude, and she certainly was no saint. Twice a week there was
the sound of fiddling and dancing feet in a certain wooden hall that
stood near the river; and there, with the men and women of the worldly
sort, Ann and her sister danced. It was their amusement; they had no
other except the idle talking and laughing that went on over the table
at which Ann sold her home-brewed beer. Ann's end in life was just the
ordinary one--respectability, or a moderate righteousness, first, and
after that, pleasure. She was a strong, vigorous, sunbrowned maiden; she
worked hard to brew her beer and to sell it. She ruled her sister with
an inflexible will. She had much to say to men whom she liked and
admired. She neither liked nor admired Bart Toyner, never threw him a
word unless in scorn; yet he loved her. She was the star by which he
steered his ship in those intervals in which his eyes were clear enough
to steer at all; and the ship did not go so far out of the track as it
would otherwise have gone. When a man is in the right course, with a
good hope of the port, rowing and steering, however toilsome, is a
cheerful thing; but when the track is so far lost that the sailor
scarcely hopes to regain it--then perhaps (God only knows) it requires
more virtue to row and steer at all, even though it be done fitfully.

This belief that he could never come to any desired haven was the one
force above all others that went to the ruining of Toyner's life.

CHAPTER III.

Bart Toyner was more than thirty years old when the period of his
reformation came. His father had grown old and fo