Gnashing his teeth, as if in despair, he hissed out: "It's the moderate
drinking as has worked all the mischief, woman, if you want to know; and
may God's curse rest upon it!"

Mattie began to understand at length the meaning of her parents'
distress, and hastened to proffer the only advice that was in her power
to give.

"Daddie, mammie," she said, "won't you come and sign the pledge too?
Then you won't never touch the drink again, and we'll have a nice home;
and me, and Melie, and Bob'll stay with you, and never run away as we've
been a talking of."

Then Melie and Bob came and said: "Oh, please do! We're so hungry and
miser'ble all the time; and if you'll only give up the drink we'll be so
good, and never want any beating."

George looked at Susan across the upturned faces of the children, and
Susan looked back at him wistfully, earnestly.

"Susan," said George, in low, troubled tones; "if I promise now, can I
ever keep my word? for I'm raging for a drop this minute."

Susan might have answered, "So am I," but, with a touch of returning
womanliness, she hid her own suffering that she might minister to the
need of the man who thus confessed his weakness.

"George," she answered steadily, "I had a praying mother once, and so
had you. I once knew how to pray myself, and so did you; and if ever our
mothers' prayers for us are going to be answered, it'll be now; and if
ever we begin to pray for ourselves again, it'll be this very minute, or
we shall be lost for ever!" And Susan fell on her knees, and
passionately poured out her whole soul that forgiveness might be granted
to herself and her erring husband, and that to their weakness and
feebleness there might descend the almighty power and perpetual help of
an Omnipotent Saviour.

Was that prayer answered? Could two souls so bound and tied by Satan's
strongest fetters be loosed and set free, no longer slaves of a tyrant
but children of a King? Let the new home in a new land, and the subdued
brightness of their faces, and the happy abandonment of their children's
glee answer, and say that once again the captives of the mighty have
been taken away, and the prey of the terrible delivered.

In his own land, Timothy Morris hears, from time to time, of the well
doing of his former neighbours; and rejoices that he has been the humble
instrument of bringing light and succour to a household which had been
darkened and degraded for years through the insidious advances o