r wine, after one of our club dinners, and all had been hearty
together,--Lowborough giving us mad toasts, and hearing our wild songs,
and bearing a hand in the applause, if he did not help us to sing them
himself,--he suddenly relapsed into silence, sinking his head on his
hand, and never lifting his glass to his lips;--but this was nothing new;
so we let him alone, and went on with our jollification, till, suddenly
raising his head, he interrupted us in the middle of a roar of laughter
by exclaiming,--'Gentlemen, where is all this to end?--Will you just tell
me that now?--Where is it all to end?' He rose.

'"A speech, a speech!" shouted we. "Hear, hear! Lowborough's going to
give us a speech!"

'He waited calmly till the thunders of applause and jingling of glasses
had ceased, and then proceeded,--"It's only this, gentlemen,--that I
think we'd better go no further. We'd better stop while we can."

'"Just so!" cried Hattersley--

"Stop, poor sinner, stop and think
Before you further go,
No longer sport upon the brink
Of everlasting woe."

'"Exactly!" replied his lordship, with the utmost gravity. "And if you
choose to visit the bottomless pit, I won't go with you--we must part
company, for I swear I'll not move another step towards it!--What's
this?" he said, taking up his glass of wine.

'"Taste it," suggested I.

'"This is hell broth!" he exclaimed. "I renounce it for ever!" And he
threw it out into the middle of the table.

'"Fill again!" said I, handing him the bottle--"and let us drink to your
renunciation."

'"It's rank poison," said he, grasping the bottle by the neck, "and I
forswear it! I've given up gambling, and I'll give up this too." He was
on the point of deliberately pouring the whole contents of the bottle on
to the table, but Hargrave wrested it from him. "On you be the curse,
then!" said he. And, backing from the room, he shouted, "Farewell, ye
tempters!" and vanished amid shouts of laughter and applause.

'We expected him back among us the next day; but, to our surprise, the
place remained vacant: we saw nothing of him for a whole week; and we
really began to think he was going to keep his word. At last, one
evening, when we were most of us assembled together again, he entered,
silent and grim as a ghost, and would have quietly slipped into his usual
seat at my elbow, but we all rose to welcome him, and several voices were
raised to ask what he would have, a