he case, was not
very apparent; he was too good a politician and office-seeker, to show
any feeling on the subject, and thus endanger a vote. Harry Grimes'
vote counted one, and a single vote sometimes gained or lost an
election.

"One of their gags," he said, laughing. "But I'm too old a stager not
to see the flimsiness of such pretensions. Poverty and crime have their
origin in the corrupt heart, and their foundations are laid long and
long before the first step is taken on the road to inebriety. It is
easy to promise results; for only the few look at causes, and trace
them to their effects."

"Rum and ruin (hic). Are they not cause and effect?" asked Grimes.

"Sometimes they are," was the half extorted answer.

"Oh, Green, is that you?" exclaimed the judge, as Harvey Green came in
with a soft cat-like step. He was, evidently, glad of a chance to get
rid of his familiar friend and elector.

I turned my eyes upon the man, and read his face closely. It was
unchanged. The same cold, sinister eye; the same chiselled mouth, so
firm now, and now yielding so elastically; the same smile "from the
teeth outward"--the same lines that revealed his heart's deep, dark
selfishness. If he had indulged in drink during the five intervening
years, it had not corrupted his blood, nor added thereto a single
degree of heat.

"Have you seen anything of Hammond this evening?" asked Judge Lyman.

"I saw him an hour or two ago," answered Green.

"How does he like his new horse?"

"He's delighted with him."

"What was the price?"

"Three hundred dollars."

"Indeed!"

The judge had already arisen, and he and Green were now walking side by
side across the bar-room floor.

"I want to speak a word with you," I heard Lyman say.

And then the two went out together. I saw no more of them during the
evening.

Not long afterward, Willy Hammond came in. Ah! there was a sad change
here; a change that in no way belied the words of Matthew the
bar-keeper. He went up to the bar, and I heard him ask for Judge Lyman.
The answer was in so low a voice that it did not reach my ear.

With a quick, nervous motion, Hammond threw his hand toward a row of
decanters on the shelf behind the bar-keeper, who immediately set one
of them containing brandy before him. From this he poured a tumbler
half full, and drank it off at a single draught, unmixed with water.

He then asked some further question, which I could not hear,
manifesting, as it appe