why don't you send that
miserable Tom Darcy home? He's been hanging around here long enough."

Tom's stupefaction was not sound sleep. The dead coma had left his
brain, and the calling of his name stung his senses to keen attention.
He had an insane love of rum, but he did not love the landlord. In
other years, Peter Tindar and he had wooed the same maiden,--Ellen
Goss,--and he had won her, leaving Peter to take up with the
sharp-tempered damsel who had brought him the tavern, and Tom knew
that lately the tapster had gloated over the misery of the woman who
had once discarded him.

"Why don't you send him home?" demanded Mrs. Tindar, with an impatient
stamp of her foot.

"Hush, Betsey, he's got money. Let him be, and he'll be sure to spend
it before he goes home. I'll have the kernel of that nut, and his wife
may have the husk."

Betsey turned away, and shortly afterward Tom Darcy lifted himself up
on his elbow.

"Ah, Tom, are you awake?"

"Yes."

"Then rouse up and have a warm glass."

Tom got upon his feet and steadied himself.

"No; I won't drink any more to-night."

"It won't hurt you, Tom--just one glass."

"I know it won't!" said Tom, buttoning up his coat by the solitary
button left. "I know it won't!"

And with this he went out into the chill air of midnight. When he got
away from the shadow of the tavern, he stopped and looked up at the
stars, and then he looked down upon the earth.

"Aye," he muttered, grinding his heel in the gravel, "Peter Tindar is
taking the kernel, and leaving poor Ellen the worthless husk,--a husk
more than worthless! and I am helping him do it. I am robbing my wife
of joy, robbing my dear children of honor and comfort, and robbing
myself of love and life--just that Peter Tindar may have the kernel,
and Ellen the husk! We'll see!"

It was a revelation to the man. The tavern-keeper's speech, not meant
for his ears, had come on his senses as fell the voice of the Risen
One upon Saul of Tarsus.

"We'll see!" he said, setting his foot firmly upon the ground; and
then he wended his way homeward.

On the following morning he said to his wife, "Ellen, have you any
coffee in the house?"

"Yes, Tom." She did not tell him that her sister had given it to her.
She was glad to hear him ask for coffee, instead of the old, old
cider.

"I wish you would make me a cup, good and strong."

There was really music in Tom's voice, and the wife set about her work
with a strange flut