birth all of his life and spoke
the dialect of the community. "Wal! I am jiggered!" he repeated.
"What ye got there?"

"I guess you see whom we have, Mr. Massey," said Frank Bowman pushing
in and leading the storekeeper.

"Oh, Mr. Massey! It's Hopewell Drugg," Janice said pleadingly. "Can't
you help him?"

"Janice Day! I declare to sun-up!" ejaculated the druggist. "What you
beauing about that half-baked critter for? And he's drunk?"

"He is _not_!" cried the girl, with indignation. "At least, he is like
no other drunken person I have seen. He is ill. They gave him
something to drink down at the Inn--at that dance where he was playing
his violin--and it has made him ill. Don't you _see_?" and she stamped
her foot impatiently.

"Hoity-toity, young lady!" chuckled Massey.

They were all inside now and the druggist locked the door again.
Behind the stove, in the corner, sat Mr. Cross Moore, and he did not
say a word.

"You can see yourself, Mr. Massey," urged Frank Bowman, helping Drugg
into a chair, "that this is no ordinary drunk."

"No," Massey said reflectively, and now looked with some pity at the
helpless man. "Alcohol never did exhilarate Hopewell. It just dopes
him. It does some folks. And it doesn't take much to do it."

"Then Hopewell Drugg has been in the habit of drinking?" asked Bowman,
in surprise. "You have seen him this way before?"

"No, he hasn't. Never mind what these chattering old women in town say
about him now. I never saw him this way but once before. That was
when he had been given some brandy. 'Member that time, Cross, when we
all went fishin' down to Pine Cove? Gosh! Must have been all of
twenty years ago."

All that Mr. Cross Moore emitted was a grunt, but he nodded.

"Hopewell cut himself--'bad--on a rusty bailer. He fell on it and
liked ter bled to death. You know, Cross, we gave him brandy and he
was dead to the world for hours."

"Yes," said Mr. Moore. "What did he want to drink now for?"

"I do not believe he knowingly took anything intoxicating," Janice said
earnestly. "They have been playing tricks down there at the tavern on
him."

"Tricks?" repeated Mr. Moore curiously.

"Yes, sir," said Janice. "Men mean enough to sell liquor are mean
enough to do anything. And not only those who actually sell the stuff
are to blame in a case like this, but those who encourage the sale of
it."

Mr. Cross Moore uncrossed his long legs and crossed them