rman lay in the sodden sleep with which he ended a spree. He had
rolled up his coat for a pillow, and had thrown one arm across his
purple, bloated face. Only the weak, helpless, open mouth could be seen.
His muscular hands were relaxed, and the whole prostrate figure was
pathetic in its unconsciousness of will and grotesque unhumanness. Fate
had been too strong for Tom Davis. His birth and all the circumstances of
his useless life had brought him with resistless certainty to this level,
and his progress in the future could only be an ever-hastening plunge
downward.

But the preacher did not consider fate when he turned and looked at the
drunken man. A stern look crept over the face which had smiled at Molly
but a moment before.

"This is the third time," he said, "that this has happened since Tom came
and told me he would try to keep sober. I had hoped the Spirit of God had
touched him."

"I know," the woman answered, turning the coat she was mending, and
moving the lamp a little to get a better light; "and it's awful hard on
me, so it is; that's where all our money goes. I can't get shoes for the
children's feet, let alone a decent rag to put on my back to wear of a
Sabbath, and come to church. It's hard on me, now, I tell you, Mr. Ward."

"It is harder on him," John replied. "Think of his immortal soul. Oh,
Mrs. Davis, do you point out to him the future he is preparing for
himself?"

"Yes," she said, "I'm tellin' him he'll go to hell all the time; but it
don't do no good. Tom's afraid of hell, though; it's the only thing as
ever did keep him straight. After one o' them sermons of yours, I've
known him swear off as long as two months. I ain't been to church this
long time, till last Sabbath; and I was hopin' I'd hear one of that kind,
all about hell, Mr. Ward, so I could tell Tom, but you didn't preach that
way. Not but what it was good, though," she added, with an evident wish
to be polite.

John's face suddenly flushed. "I--I know I did not, but the love of God
must constrain us, Mrs. Davis, as well as the fear of hell."

Mrs. Davis sighed. Tom's spiritual condition, which had roused a
momentary interest, was forgotten in the thought of her own misery.
"Well, it's awful hard on me," she repeated with a little tremor in her
weak chin.

John looked at her with infinite pity in his eyes. "Yes," he said, "hard
on you, because of the eternal suffering which may come to your husband.
Nothing can be more frightfu