niture
and arrangements were concerned; but a very great change was apparent
in the condition of these. The brass rod around the bar, which, at my
last visit was brightly polished, was now a greenish-black, and there
came from it an unpleasant odor of verdigris. The walls were fairly
coated with dust, smoke, and fly-specks, and the windows let in the
light but feebly through the dirt-obscured glass. The floor was filthy.
Behind the bar, on the shelves designed for a display of liquors, was a
confused mingling of empty or half-filled decanters, cigar-boxes,
lemons and lemon-peel, old newspapers, glasses, a broken pitcher, a
hat, a soiled vest, and a pair of blacking brushes, with other
incongruous things, not now remembered. The air of the room was loaded
with offensive vapors.

Disgusted with every thing about the bar, I went into the sitting-room.
Here, there was some order in the arrangement of the dingy furniture;
but you might have written your name in dust on the looking-glass and
table. The smell of the torpid atmosphere was even worse than that of
the bar-room. So I did not linger here, but passed through the hall,
and out upon the porch, to get a draught of pure air.

Slade still sat leaning against the wall.

"Fine day this," said he, speaking in a mumbling kind of voice.

"Very fine," I answered.

"Yes, very fine."

"Not doing so well as you were a few years ago," said I.

"No--you see--these--these 'ere blamed temperance people are ruining
everything."

"Ah! Is that so?"

"Yes. Cedarville isn't what it was when you first came to the 'Sickle
and Sheaf.' I--I--you see. Curse the temperance people! They've ruined
every thing, you see. Every thing! Ruined--"

And he muttered and mouthed his words in such a way, that I could
understand but little he said; and, in that little, there was scarcely
any coherency. So I left him, with a feeling of pity in my heart for
the wreck he had become, and went into the town to call upon one or two
gentlemen with whom I had business.

In the course of the afternoon, I learned that Mrs. Slade was in an
insane asylum, about five miles from Cedarville. The terrible events of
the day on which young Hammond was murdered completed the work of
mental ruin, begun at the time her husband abandoned the quiet,
honorable calling of a miller, and became a tavern-keeper. Reason could
hold its position no longer. When word came to her that Willy and his
mother were both dead, she