realized that to place him in any one of the other camps,
where the ban was on whisky, and where each smuggled bottle was
ferreted out and smashed, would be no test. It is no credit to a man to
refrain from whisky where no whisky is.

But place a man who has created an appetite for whisky among men who
drink daily and openly, and enjoy it; who urge and encourage him to do
likewise; where whisky is continually before his eyes, and the rich
bouquet of it in his nostrils, and that _is_ a test.

Appleton knew this, and knowing, he sent Bill to Moncrossen, and smiled
as he bet with himself on the outcome. But there is one other test--the
supreme test of all, of which even Appleton did not know.

Place this same man alone, tired out, hungry, thirsty, and cold, with
every muscle of his body crying its protest of aches against the
overstrain of a long day's work; surround him with every attribute of
physical discomfort; with the future stretching away in a dull gray
vista of uncertainty, and the memory strong upon him that the girl--the
one girl in all the world--has ceased to believe in him--has ceased to
care; add to this the recollection of good times gone--times when good
liquor flowed freely among good fellows, and at this particular
psychological moment let him come suddenly and unexpectedly upon a
bottle of whisky--good whisky, of a brand of which he has always
approved--_that_ is the acid test--and in writing this I know whereof I
write.

And that is why Bill Carmody carefully and deliberately broke the seal
and threw the cork away, and shook the bottle gently, and breathed deep
of its fragrance, and smiled in anticipation as the little beads flew
upward.

The fire had died down, and he set the bottle on the floor beside him
and reached for the firewood. As he did so a long, sealed envelope, to
the outside of which was tightly bound a photograph, fell to the floor
from the inner pocket of his mackinaw.

As he stooped to recover it his eyes encountered those of the picture
gazing upward through the half-light. A flickering tongue of flame
flared brightly for a moment and illumined the features, bringing out
their expression with startling distinctness.

It was the face of the girl. The flame died out, leaving the pictured
likeness half concealed in the soft semi-darkness of the dying embers.

It seemed hours that the man sat motionless, staring into the upturned
eyes--those eyes into which he had so often gazed