tify. But there
was one capacity in which William Cavers was a spectacular success,
and that was in maintaining the country's revenue from malt and
distilled liquors, for Bill was possessed of a thirst that never
faltered.

Bill was quite different from the drunkard who consumes and never
produces, for he would work and work hard; and he was strictly honest
with every one except himself and his family. Sandy Braden was not
afraid to trust Bill with all the whiskey he wanted, for Bill would
surely pay. His wife might not have respectable clothes to come to
town in, and Libby Anne knew what it was like more than once to go
hungry to bed, but Bill always paid what was chalked up against him
at the Grand Pacific without question. All the neighbours called Bill
Cavers a good, straight fellow.

When Bill was sober, he bitterly regretted the way he had wasted his
money, and he often made solemn protestations as to his future
conduct, the strange part of it being that at such times he fully
believed that he would never drink again, and his wife was always,
sure that he would not.

In this way life was harder for her than it would have been for a
less sanguine woman, who would have long ago given up all hope, but
Mrs. Cavers always saw her husband as he had been in his good days;
his drinking had never ceased to be a shock to her; she never could
accept it as the inevitable, but constantly looked for better days to
come.

Mrs. Cavers often told Libby Anne about the lovely home she had when
she was a little girl, and showed her just how the flower-beds were
laid out and how the seat was put in the big elm-tree outside her
mother's window, where she often sat and read and dreamed; and so it
was no wonder that her mother's old home in Ontario, where her
grandmother and Aunt Edith still lived, became to Libby Anne a sort
of Paradise Valley, the delectable country of her dreams, and through
all her colourless childhood there ran a hope like a thread of gold
that some time she and her mother would go back.

The last summer that they had been on their own farm this hope had
been very real, for her father had said one day, when he was in his
best mood, that if the crop turned out well they would all go down
east for three months.

Then what a busy, hopeful time began for Libby Anne and her mother.
Everything was bent toward this one end. Mrs. Cavers made butter and
sold it. Libby Anne looked faithfully after the eggs, and made