claimed Fred. "_Lose_ it, for your wife's
sake. Besides, you'll _make_ reputation instead of lose it: you'll be as
famous as the Red River Raft, or the Mammoth Cave--the only thing of the
kind west of the Alleghanies. As for the boys, tell them I've bet you a
hundred that you can't stay off your liquor for a year, and that, you're
not the man to take a dare."

"_That_ sounds like business," exclaimed the captain springing to his
feet.

"Let me draw up a pledge," said Fred, eagerly, drawing, pen and ink
toward him.

"No, you don't, my boy," said the captain, gently, and pushing Fred out
of the room and upon the guards. "Emily shall do that. Below
there!--Perkins, I've got to go uptown for an hour; see if you can't
pick up freight to pay laying-up expenses somehow. Fred, go home and get
your traps; 'How's the accepted time,' as your father-in-law has dinged
at me, many a Sunday, from the pulpit."

As Sam Crayne strode toward the body of the town, his business instincts
took strong hold of his sentiments, in the manner natural alike to
saints and sinners, and he laid a plan of operations against whisky
which was characterized by the apparent recklessness but actual prudence
which makes for glory in steamboat captains, as it does in army
commanders. As was his custom in business, he first drove at full speed
upon the greatest obstacles; so it came to pass he burst into his own
house, threw his arm around his wife with more than ordinary tenderness,
and then looking into her eyes with a daring born of utter desperation,
said:

"Emily, I came back to sign the strongest temperance-pledge that you can
possibly draw up; Fred Macdonald wanted to write out one, but I told him
that nobody but you should do it; you've earned the right to, poor
girl." No such duty and surprise having ever before come hand-in-hand to
Mrs. Crayme, she acted as every true woman will imagine that she herself
would have done under similar circumstances, and this action made it not
so easy as it might otherwise have been to see just where the pen and
ink were, or to prevent the precious document, when completed, from
being disfigured by peculiar blots which were neither fingermarks nor
ink-spots, yet which in shape and size suggested both of these
indications of unneatness. Mrs. Crayme was not an adept at literary
composition, and, being conscious of her own deficiency, she begged that
a verbal pledge might be substituted; but her husband was firm.