he meanwhile Mr
Oliphant found the boy employment. Unfortunately for himself, Frank
Oldfield was not in any way dependent for his living on his own
exertions. His father allowed him to draw on him to the amount of three
hundred pounds a year, so that, with reasonable care, he could live very
comfortably, especially if he voluntarily continued the total abstinence
which he had been compelled to practise on board ship. The reader is
aware that he had never been a pledged abstainer at any time. Even when
most overwhelmed with shame, and most anxious to regain the place he had
lost in Mary Oliphant's esteem and affection, he would not take the one
step which might have interposed a barrier between himself and those
temptations which he had not power to resist, when they drew upon him
with a severe or sudden strain. He thought that he was only asserting a
manly independence when he refused to be pledged, whereas he was simply
just allowing Satan to cheat him with a miserable lie, while he held in
reserve his right to commit an excess which he flattered himself he
should never be guilty of; but which he was secretly resolved not to
bind himself to forego. Thus he played fast and loose with his
conscience, and was really being carried with the tide while he fancied
himself to be riding safely at anchor. Had he then forgotten Mary? Had
he relinquished all desire and hope of seeing her once more, and
claiming her for his wife? No; she was continually in his thoughts.
His affection was deepened by absence and distance; but by a strange
infatuation, spite of all that had happened in the past, he would always
picture her to himself as his, irrespective of his own steadfastness and
sobriety. He knew she would never consent to be a drunkard's wife, yet
at the same time he would never allow himself to realise that he could
himself forfeit her hand and love through the drunkard's sin. He would
never look steadily at the matter in this light at all. He was sober
now, and he took for granted that he should continue to be so. It was
treason to himself and to his manhood and truth to doubt it. And so,
when, after he had been about a month in the colony, he received a
letter from Mrs Oliphant full of kindly expressions of interest and
hopes that, by the time he received the letter, he would have formally
enrolled himself amongst the pledged abstainers, he fiercely crumpled up
the letter and thrust it from him, persuading himself