the drink, and so her physical state added to
her utter depression. Conscience began to speak as it had never spoken
before; and then came pressing on her the horrible craving, which she
had no means now of gratifying. The past and the future fastened upon
her soul like the fiery fangs of two fearful snakes. She saw the wasted
past--her children neglected; her home desolate, empty, foul,
comfortless; her husband and herself wasting life in the indulgence of
their common sin, living without God in the world;--she saw herself the
cause, in part at least, of her son's flight; she remembered how she had
ever set herself against his joining the band of total abstainers;--and
now she beheld herself about the vilest thing on earth--a mother
deliberately tempting her daughter to deceive her father, that herself
might gratify her craving for the drink. Oh, how she loathed herself!
oh, what a horror crept over her soul! Could she really be so utterly
vile? could she really have sunk so low? And then came up before her
the yet more fearful future: her husband no longer a companion with her
in her sin--she must sin alone; her daughter alienated from her by her
own act; and then the drink, for which she had sold herself body and
soul, she must be without it, she must crave and not be satisfied--the
thought was intolerable, it was madness. But there was a farther
future; there was in the far distance the blackness of darkness for
ever, yet rendered visible by the glare of a coming hell. Evening
thickened round her, but she sat on. The air all about her seemed
crowded with spirits of evil; her misery became deeper and deeper; she
did not, she could not repent--and what then?

An hour later Betty returned from Ned Brierley's. Where was Alice?
Betty looked for her, but she was nowhere to be found; she called her,
but there was no answer. She concluded that she had gone into a
neighbour's, and sat down waiting for her till she grew weary: her heart
was softened towards her; she would pray for her, she would try still to
win her back from the bondage of Satan; she was her mother still. Hour
after hour passed, but still her mother did not come. Betty took a
light, and went up into the chamber to fetch her Bible. Something
unusual near the door caught her eye--with a scream of terror she darted
forward. Oh, what a sight! her miserable mother was hanging behind the
door from a beam! Betty's repeated screams brought in the nei