I'll never drink my brother's health
in cowld wather."

"Throth an' you will this time," said Harte, "undher this roof spirits
won't crass; your lips, an' you know for why."

"I know but one thing," replied Art, "that as you said yourself, if it
was vitriol, I'd dhrink it for the best brother that ever lived; I only
promised him that I wouldn't get dhrunk, an' sure, drinkin' a glass o'
whiskey, or three either, wouldn't make me dhrunk--so hand it here."

"Well, Art," said Harte, "there's one man you can't blame for this, and
that is Syl Harte."

"No, Syl, never--but now, boys, I am ready."

"Frank Maguire's health! hip, hip, hurra!"

Thus was a fine, generous-minded, and affectionate young man--who
possessed all the candor and absence of suspicion which characterize
truth--tempted and triumphed over, partly through the very warmth of
his own affections, by a set of low, cunning profligates, who felt only
anxious to drag him down from the moral superiority which they felt
he possessed. That he was vain, and fond of praise, they knew, and our
readers may also perceive that it was that unfortunate vanity which
gave them the first advantage over him, by bringing him, through its
influence, among them. Late that night he was carried home on a door, in
a state of unconscious intoxication.

It is utterly beyond our power to describe the harrowing state of
his sensations on awakening the next morning. Abasement, repentance,
remorse, all combined as they were within him, fall far short of what
he felt; he was degraded in his own eyes, deprived of self-respect, and
stripped of every claim to the confidence of his brother, as he was
to the well-known character for integrity which had been until then
inseparable from the name. That, however, which pressed upon him with
the most intense bitterness was the appalling reflection that he could
no longer depend upon himself, nor put any trust in his own resolutions.
Of what use was he in the world without a will of his own, and the power
of abiding by its decisions? None; yet what was to be done? He could not
live out of the world, and wherever he went, its temptations would beset
him. Then there was his beloved Margaret Murray! was he to make her the
wife of a common drunkard? or did she suspect, when she pledged herself
to him, that she was giving away her heart and affections to a poor
unmanly sot, who had not sense or firmness to keep himself sober? He
felt in a state between