re it is! Didn't expect me! No supper! This is all I'm to
get after spending all my wages on them as don't care to give me a
mouthful of meat and a drop of drink when I want 'em!"

"Jim! Jim! Don't," exclaimed his poor sister, "oh! Don't! For the
Lord's sake! You'll repent it bitterly by-and-by! Oh! It can't be our
dear, kind Jim, as God sent to help and comfort us! We'd give you meat
and drink, if we had them, but the last crumb's gone, and mother's never
bitten to-day!"

"Nonsense! Don't tell _me_! None of your humbug and cant with me! If
I can't get supper where I ought, I'll get it where I can! I'll not
darken this door again as sure as my name's Jim Forbes!"

With a scowl, and a curse, and a slam of the door that startled the
little ones from their sleep, the miserable son flung himself out of his
home. The next day he enlisted; the day following he was gone
altogether.

Weep! Weep! Ye holy angels! Howl with savage glee, ye mocking fiends!
See what the drink can do! And yet, O wondrous strange! There are
thinking men, loving men, Christian men, who tell us we are wrong, we
are mad in trying to pluck the intoxicating cup away from men and women,
and to keep it wholly out of the hands of little children and upgrowing
boys and girls. Mad are we? Be it so; but there's method, there's holy
love, there's heavenly wisdom in our madness.

A month had passed away, but no tidings of Jim Forbes; no letter telling
of penitence or love. Oh! If he would only write: only just a word:
only to say, "Mother, sister, I love you still." But no; hearts must
wither, hearts must break, as the idol car of intemperance holds on its
way, crushing out life temporal and eternal from thousands and tens of
thousands who throw themselves madly under its wheels. But must it be
so for ever?--No! It cannot, it shall not be, God helping us; for their
rises up a cry to heaven against the unholy traffic in strong drink; a
cry that _must_ be heard.

The snow was falling fast, but not faster nor more softly than the tears
of the widowed mother and the crippled daughter, as they bowed
themselves down before the cold bars, which ought to have enclosed a
mass of glowing coals on that pitiless December day; but only a dull red
spark or two, amid a heap of dust, just twinkled in the grate, and
seemed to mock their wretchedness. Cold! Cold! Everything was cold
there but faith and love. Food there was none! But on the lit