tory of the sleeper underneath often, often. It is
one of the legends now, of Beersheba. Yet he thought of it with
peculiar interest, that twilight time, as he stood leaning upon the
low fence while the sun set over Dan. His face, with the after-glow of
sunset full upon it, was not a face in keeping with the quiet scene
about him. It was not a youthful face, although handsome. Yet the
lines upon it were not the lines made by time: a stronger enemy than
time had left his mark there. _Dissipation_ was written in the ruddy
complexion, the bloated flesh, and the bloodshot eye. The continual
movement of the hand feeling along the whitewashed plank, or
fingering, unconsciously, the trigger of the loaded rifle, testified,
in a dumb way, to the derangement of the nervous system which had been
surrendered to that most debasing of all passion, drink. He had sought
the invigorating mountains, the safety of isolation, to do for him
that which an abused and deadened _will_ refused to do. It is a
terrible thing to stand alone with the wreck of one's self. It is
worse to set the _Might-Have-Been_ side by side with the _Is_, and
know that it is everlastingly too late to alter the colorings of
either picture.

His was an _hereditary_ passion, an iniquity of the father visited
upon the son. Against such there is no law, and for such no remedy.

He thought bitterly of these things as he stood leaning upon the
graveyard fence. His life was a graveyard, a tangle of weeds, a plat
of purposes overgrown with rank despair. He had struggled since he
could remember. All his life had been one terrible struggle. And now,
he knew that it was useless, he understood that the evil was
hereditary, and to conquer it, or rather to free himself from it,
there was but one alternative. He glanced down at the rifle resting
against his knee. He did not intend to endure the torture any very
great while longer. He possessed the instincts of a gentleman,--the
cravings of a beast. The former had won him something of friends and
sympathy,--and love. The latter had cost him all the other had won.
For coming across the little graveyard in a straight line with the
shadows of the old cedars, her arms full of the greens and tender wild
blossoms of the mountain, was the one woman he had loved. She had done
her best to "reform" him. The world called it a "reform." If reform
meant a new birth, that was the proper name for it, he thought, as he
watched her coming down the