o meet your old cronies and to
warm up with them is about all that is left to you of real enjoyment.
Sooner or later we all live in the past, and there can be no very
great evil in bringing the past near. So, now, if you will promise me
to come home in as good condition as you can, I will give you five
dollars."

The old fellow gulped, wheeled about to hide his eyes and leant
forward with his face in his hands. Lyman slipped a bank note between
his fingers and without saying a word went up stairs. At breakfast the
next morning, which was the day of the reunion of the gallant home
guard, old Jasper was full of life and hope, but that night when Lyman
came home, he found him leaning on the gate, unable to find the latch.
"I'm all right," he said.

"I believe you are," Lyman replied.

"Am, for a fact. I promised to come in good shape. Here, all right."

Lyman managed to get him to bed without disturbing anyone, but later
at night he heard the women lashing him with their tongues. He knew
that there was justice in the lashing and he dreaded lest they should
cut at him for abetting the crime, but they did not, for at breakfast
they smiled at him, doubtless not having discovered his complicity.
The old man was heart-sick. "I want to see you," he said to Lyman, and
leading him into the sitting-room, continued: "I have said it before,
I know, but I want to say it now once for all that I'll never touch
another drop as long as I live. Why, confound my old hide, don't I
know exactly what it will do for me; and do you think I'll
deliberately make a brute of myself? I won't, that's all. It's all
right to bring the past back, that is, for a man who can do it, but it
isn't for me, I tell you that. And I don't want to see those home
guards any more. Why, if they had taken my advice, do you suppose they
would have surrendered without firing a gun? They wouldn't. I argued
with them and swore at them, but they stacked their guns; and then
what could I do but surrender? That's neither here nor there,
though--I'm never goin' to drink another drop. Oh, I've said it
before--I know that, but it sticks, this time."

CHAPTER XXXI.

THERE CAME A CHECK.

Lyman's book met with a favor that no one had ventured to forecast. It
did not touch the public's fad-nerve; it was too close to the soil for
that. It was so simple, with an art so sly, with a humor that, like an
essence, so quietly stole the senses, that the reviewers did not ari