o church like a family grocer, had sat in the pew of
a Nonconforming conventicle, and had listened to the prosy platitudes of
an unctuous spiritual shepherd, to win a girl who had found him out. He
fancied the cartoons which would appear in _The Taviton Argus_,
picturing him sitting in church, and singing Sankey's hymns. Perhaps
they would have him kneeling at the penitent form, all to get a girl who
found him out to be a liar and a hypocrite!

The reflection maddened him. But he would pay them all out. Yes, Purvis
and Sprague should bitterly repent the day they opposed his will; as for
Olive Castlemaine--well, she should suffer more than he was suffering.

But this mood did not last long. Try as he might he could not hide the
gloomy black future which loomed before him. He pictured himself as he
was before the wager was made, a hopeless cynic, a hard bitter man, a
slave to whisky. And he was worse now. He had been in heaven during
these last few months. Yes, he could not deny that a woman had cleared
his cloudy sky, and had aroused in him hopes and longings to which he
had been a stranger. The future had appeared to him as a paradise, a
heaven because a woman he loved more than words could say had promised
to be his wife. Oh, and he had loved her! Say what he would about the
falseness of women, and the evil of the world, this woman had changed
everything for him, so that he had contemplated the future with joy; but
now he saw nothing but hell. What had the future for him now? Lonely
misery, haunted by bitter thoughts of what might have been. What was a
seat in Parliament now? Who cared about him? For years he had alienated
those who would be his friends, he had become a pariah, a kind of
intellectual and moral Ishmael. How could he bear it?

With this thought the craving for whisky came back to him again. He had
promised Olive he would never touch it again, but that was a thing of
the past. Yes, he would go back to his club, and he would drink until he
forgot. He would debauch himself with spirits. He had been a fool ever
to give it up. God, if there were a God, offered him nothing; nay, more,
He had taken from him the one thing that would have made a man of him;
but the devil was faithful. The whisky bottle could be always kept close
to his elbow. Yes, and he would run the whole gamut of sin. There was
nothing to restrain him, and he had no motive power to make him desire
anything else.

When the train arrived at t