tunity. She
had fuel enough in the room to make a little fire, and at length had
summoned resolve sufficient for the fetching of water from the
street-pump. She went to the cupboard to get a jug: she could not
carry a pailful. There in the corner stood her demon-friend! her
own old familiar, the black bottle! as if he had been patiently
waiting for her all the long dreary time she had been away! With a
flash of fierce joy she remembered she had left it half-full. She
caught it up, and held it between her and the fading light of the
misty window: it was half-full still!--One glass--a hair of the
dog--would set her free from faintness and sickness, disgust and
misery! There was no one to find fault with her now! She could do
as she liked--there was no one to care!--nothing to take fire!--She
set the bottle on the table, because her hand shook, and went again
to the cupboard to get a glass. On the way--borne upward on some
heavenly current from the deeps of her soul, the face of Gibbie,
sorrowful because loving, like the face of the Son of Man, met her.
She turned, seized the bottle, and would have dashed it on the
hearthstone, but that a sudden resolve arrested her lifted arm:
Gibbie should see! She would be strong! That bottle should stand
on that shelf until the hour when she could show it him and say,
"See the proof of my victory!" She drove the cork fiercely in.
When its top was level with the neck, she set the bottle back in
its place, and from that hour it stood there, a temptation, a
ceaseless warning, the monument of a broken but reparable vow, a
pledge of hope. It may not have been a prudent measure. To a weak
nature it would have involved certain ruin. But there are natures
that do better under difficulty; there are many such. And with that
fiend-like shape in her cupboard the one ambition of Mistress
Croale's life was henceforth inextricably bound up: she would turn
that bottle into a witness for her against the judgment she had
deserved. Close by the cupboard door, like a kite or an owl nailed
up against a barn, she hung her soiled and dishonoured satin gown;
and the dusk having now gathered, took the jug, and fetched herself
water. Then, having set her kettle on the fire, she went out with
her basket, and bought bread, and butter. After a good cup of tea
and some nice toast, she went to bed again, much easier both in mind
and body, and slept.

In the morning she went to the market, op