his child. Like thousands of
others, he shuns that which might lead him into the path of truth and
right. He pays liberally for the support of his boy, and tries to
persuade himself that he is doing all that honor requires of him.

All this is but the introduction to our story; and with the next chapter
we step over a period of more than a dozen years.

CHAPTER III.

LITTLE BOBTAIL.

"What have you done with it, Robert?" demanded Ezekiel Taylor, a coarse,
rough man of forty, who was partially intoxicated and very angry. "You
and your mother've hid that jug of rum."

Robert looked at Mrs. Taylor, who was making bread at the table, but he
did not deem it prudent to make any reply. That jug was the evil genius
of the little household. It had transformed Ezekiel Taylor from an
honest, industrious, and thriving man, into a mean, lazy, and thriftless
drunkard. It had brought misery and contention into the little house
which he had bought and paid for before his marriage. He was a cooper by
trade, and had set up in business for himself; but his dissolute habit
had robbed him of his shop, and reduced him first to a journeyman and
then to a vagabond. He earned hardly enough to pay for the liquor he
consumed; but, somehow,--and how was the mystery which perplexed
everybody who knew the Taylors,--the family always had enough to eat and
good clothes to wear. Years before, he had, under the pretence of buying
a shop in which to set up in business again, mortgaged his house for
five hundred dollars, and his wife had signed away her right of dower in
the premises, without a suspicion of anything wrong. But the money was
quickly squandered, and Squire Gilfilian, who had the mortgage,
threatened to take the place, though the interest was paid with
tolerable regularity by the wife.

Ezekiel worked a little when he was sober; but a day of industry was
sure to be followed by a spree. He could procure a few drinks at the
saloons; but as soon as he began to be tipsy, even the saloon keepers
refused to furnish him more, for the public sentiment of the place
fiercely condemned them. The cooper had worked a day and obtained a jug
of rum. After breakfast he had gone into the village and drank two or
three times, and when he could procure no more liquor there, he came
home to continue his spree on the stock he had before laid in. The jug
had been concealed in the wood-shed, where Robert had discovered it. It
suggested evil to himse