o can describe the
inveterate tenacity with which a drunkard's habits cling to him through
life. He may repent--he may reform--he may look with actual abhorrence
upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reformation and compunction,
who can tell the moment in which the base and ruinous propensity may not
recur, triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, everything, and
prostrating its victim once more in all that is destructive and revolting
in that fatal vice.

The wretched man left the place in a state of utter intoxication. He was
brought home nearly insensible, and placed in his bed, where he lay in
the deep calm lethargy of drunkenness. The younger part of the family
retired to rest much after their usual hour; but the poor wife remained
up sitting by the fire, too much grieved and shocked at the recurrence of
what she had so little expected, to settle to rest; fatigue, however, at
length overcame her, and she sunk gradually into an uneasy slumber. She
could not tell how long she had remained in this state, when she
awakened, and immediately on opening her eyes, she perceived by the faint
red light of the smouldering turf embers, two persons, one of whom she
recognized as her husband noiselessly gliding out of the room.

"Pat, darling, where are you going?" said she. There was no answer--the
door closed after them; but in a moment she was startled and terrified by
a loud and heavy crash, as if some ponderous body had been hurled down
the stair. Much alarmed, she started up, and going to the head of the
staircase, she called repeatedly upon her husband, but in vain. She
returned to the room, and with the assistance of her daughter, whom I had
occasion to mention before, she succeeded in finding and lighting a
candle, with which she hurried again to the head of the staircase. At the
bottom lay what seemed to be a bundle of clothes, heaped together,
motionless, lifeless--it was her husband. In going down the stairs, for
what purpose can never now be known, he had fallen helplessly and
violently to the bottom, and coming head foremost, the spine at the neck
had been dislocated by the shock, and instant death must have ensued. The
body lay upon that landing-place to which his dream had referred. It is
scarcely worth endeavouring to clear up a single point in a narrative
where all is mystery; yet I could not help suspecting that the second
figure which had been seen in the room by Connell's wife on the night of
his d