or wine with a
green label on the bottle. One by one you refused it, and when I rose to
quaff my final glass alone, every eye before me fell and did not lift
again until the glass was drained. I did not notice this then, but I see
it all now, just as I hear again the excuses you gave for not filling
your glasses as the bottle went round. One had drunk enough; one
suffered from qualms brought on by an unaccustomed indulgence in
oysters; one felt that wine good enough for me was too good for him,
and so on and so on. Not one to show frank eyes and drink with me as I
was ready to drink with him! Why? Because one and all of you knew what
was in that cup, and would not risk an inheritance so nearly within your
grasp."

"Lies! lies!" again shrieked the raucous voice of Luke, smothered by
terror; while oaths, shouts, imprecations, rang out in horrid tumult
from one end of the table to the other, till the lawyer's face, over
which a startling change was rapidly passing, drew the whole crowd
forward again in awful fascination, till they clung, speechless, arm in
arm, shoulder propping shoulder, while he gasped out in dismay equal to
their own, these last fatal words:

"That was at your board, my brothers; now you are at mine. You have
eaten my viands, drunk of my cup; and now, through the mouth of the one
man who has been true to me because therein lies his advantage, I offer
you a final glass. Will you drink it? I drank yours. By that old-time
oath which binds us to share each other's fortune, I ask you to share
this cup with me. _You will not?_"

"No, no, no!" shouted one after another.

"Then," the inexorable voice went on, a voice which to these miserable
souls was no longer that of the lawyer, but an issue from the grave they
had themselves dug for Anthony Westonhaugh, "know that your abstinence
comes too late; that you have already drunk the toast destined to end
your lives. The bottle which you must have missed from that board of
yours has been offered you again. A label is easily changed and--Luke,
John, Hector, I know you all so well--that bottle has been greedily
emptied by you; and while I, who sipped sparingly, lived three weeks,
you, who have drunk deep, _have not three hours before you, possibly not
three minutes_."

O, the wail of those lost souls as this last sentence issued in a final
pant of horror from the lawyer's quaking lips! Shrieks--howls--prayers
for mercy--groans to make the hair rise--and curses,