e
discovery, coming from such a quarter, caused considerable merriment.

"Let him alone," said an old toper; and Griffith remained a good hour
with his head on the table. Meantime the other gentlemen soon put it out
of their power to ridicule him on the score of intoxication.

Griffith, keeping quiet, got a little better, and suddenly started up
with a notion he was to go to Kate this very moment. He muttered an
excuse, and staggered to a glass door that led to the lawn. He opened
this door, and rushed out into the open air. He thought it would set him
all right; but, instead of that, it made him so much worse that
presently his legs came to a misunderstanding, and he measured his
length on the ground, and could not get up again, but kept slipping
down.

Upon this he groaned and lay quiet.

Now there was a foot of snow on the ground; and it melted about
Griffith's hot temples and flushed face, and mightily refreshed and
revived him.

He sat up and kissed Kate's letter, and Love began to get the upper hand
of Liquor a little.

Finally he got up and half strutted, half staggered, to the turret, and
stood under Kate's window.

The turret was covered with luxuriant ivy, and that ivy with snow. So
the glass of the window was set in a massive frame of winter; but a
bright fire burned inside the room, and this set the panes all aflame.
It was cheery and glorious to see the window glow like a sheet of
transparent fire in its deep frame of snow; but Griffith could not
appreciate all that. He stood there a sorrowful man. The wine he had
taken to drown his despair had lost its stimulating effect, and had
given him a heavy head, but left him his sick heart.

He stood and puzzled his drowsy faculties why Kate had sent for him.
Was it to bid him good by forever, or to lessen his misery by telling
him she would not marry another? He soon gave up cudgelling his
enfeebled brains. Kate was a superior being to him, and often said
things, and did things, that surprised him. She had sent for him, and
that was enough. He should see her and speak to her once more, at all
events. He stood, alternately nodding and looking up at her glowing
room, and longing for its owner to appear. But as Bacchus had inspired
him to mistake eight o'clock for nine, and as she was not a votary of
Bacchus, she did not appear; and he stood there till he began to shiver.

The shadow of a female passed along the wall; and Griffith gave a great
start. Then