nts at
one draught, before he realised what had happened.

The mystified, horrified expression on his face as he set the can
down, was almost ludicrous; to his mates who were all in the secret,
it was irresistibly funny.

There was a roar of delighted laughter, and Jim's eyes blazed with
anger as he glared at the can he still grasped in his hand.

Yes! It was his own can, and they had taken away his coffee and filled
it with beer! He had been basely tricked. He stood there realising it,
while the roars of laughter were sobering down into words.

"Ha! Ha! old teetotaller! That's the best fun we ever had!"

"Jolly good coffee! isn't it, Jim? If you could only have seen your
own face!"

"Never mind, old chap! You can be a teetotaller again to-morrow."

"I won't!" said Jim angrily, "I did try. Now I don't care what
happens."

He gathered up his dinner basket and the can of beer, and stalked
away, and a silence fell upon the little group of workmen as they
watched him.

CHAPTER XIX.

A SUCCESSFUL RAID.

Jim Adams stuck to his threat. He ceased to be an abstainer, and life
changed at once for himself and for all those with whom he came in
contact.

He was morose with his mates, and withdrew from their company as much
as possible. He shared the supper beer with Jane, but he constantly
spoke sharply to her and especially resented the least inattention to
Harry's wants, so that it seemed as if the two had changed places,
and now it was Jim who found fault and Jane who, aided by that secret
object in her mind, took it quietly and made the best of things.

To Harry, Jim was never cross, but the child felt a difference, and
missed the companionship Jim had given him, for now Jim either called
in at the public-house on his way home from work, or, returning early,
went out immediately after supper, and he ceased to take an interest
in the Mission Service or in Harry's singing.

Jim was bitterly disappointed with himself. He had been trying to be
good like his little sister Nellie, to be good enough to meet her
in Heaven, and now he had been tricked into doing what he had no
intention of doing, and the old liking had come back with the old
taste. He had emptied the rest of that can of beer with real relish,
for in his anger he had carried it away to finish it with his dinner,
and in that finishing of it, he had gone under to the old temptation.

He had fought and failed. If, in his anger at the base tricker