inst all these things, specially when a body's
bin disappointed in love. It's bin a hard up and down with him. To-day
he would make a bit of good weather, and to-morrow he'd be all up in a
hurricane." And the old sailor takes a fresh quid of tobacco, wipes
Tom's face, gets the brush and fusses over him, and tells him to cheer
up, now that he has got his clearance.

"Tom would know if his mother ordered it."

"No! she must not know that you are at large," rejoins George.

"Not that I am at large?"

"I have," interposes the young theologian, "provided a place for you. We
have a home for you, a snug little place at the house of old McArthur--"

"Old McArthur," interpolates Tom, smiling, "I'm not a curiosity."

George Mullholland says he may make love to Maria, that she will once
more be a sister. Touched by the kindly act on his behalf, Tom replies
saying she was always kind to him, watched over him when no one else
would, and sought with tender counsels to effect his reform, to make him
forget his troubles.

"Thank you!--my heart thanks you more forcibly than my tongue can. I
feel a man. I won't touch drink again: no I won't. You won't find me
breaking my honor this time. A sick at heart man, like me, has no power
to buffet disappointment. I was a wretch, and like a wretch without a
mother's sympathy, found relief only in drinks--"

"And such drinks!" interposes the old sailor, shrugging his shoulders.
"Good weather, and a cheer up, now and then, from a friend, would have
saved him."

Now there appears in the doorway, the stalworth figure of the
vote-cribber, who, with sullen face, advances mechanically toward Tom,
pauses and regards him with an air of suspicion. "You are not what you
ought to be, Tom," he says, doggedly, and turns to the young Missionary.
"Parson," he continues, "this 'ere pupil of yourn's a hard un. He isn't
fit for respectable society. Like a sponge, he soaks up all the whiskey
in jail." The young man turns upon him a look more of pity than scorn,
while the jailer shakes his head admonishingly. The vote-cribber
continues insensible to the admonition. He, be it known, is a character
of no small importance in the political world. Having a sort of sympathy
for the old jail he views his transient residences therein rather
necessary than otherwise. As a leading character is necessary to every
grade of society, so also does he plume himself the aristocrat of the
prison. Persons committed for any ot