Gough, "I thought you
were getting along so nicely, and that with proper care you would be on
your feet in a few days, but this morning you look so feeble, and seem
so nervous and depressed. Do tell me what has happened and what has
become of your beautiful hair; oh you had such a wealth of tresses, I
really loved to toy with them. Was your head so painful that the doctor
ordered them to be cut?"

"Oh, no," she said burying her face in the pillow and breaking into a
paroxysm of tears. "Oh, Miss Belle, how can I tell you," she replied
recovering from her sudden outburst of sorrow.

"Why, what is it darling? I am at a loss to know what has become of your
beautiful hair."

With gentle womanly tact Belle saw that the loss of her hair was a
subject replete with bitter anguish, and turning to the children she
took them in her lap and interested and amused them by telling beautiful
fairy stories. In a short time Mary's composure returned, and she said,
"Miss Belle, I can now tell you how I lost my hair. Last night my
husband, or the wreck of what was once my husband, came home. His eyes
were wild and bloodshot; his face was pale and haggard, his gait uneven,
and his hand trembling. I have seen him suffering from _Manipaotu_ and
dreaded lest he should have a returning of it. Mrs. Graham had just
stepped out, and there was no one here but myself and children. He held
in his hand a pair of shears, and approached my bedside. I was ready to
faint with terror, when he exclaimed, 'Mary I must have liquor or I
shall go wild,' he caught my hair in his hand; I was too feeble to
resist, and in a few minutes he had cut every lock from my head, and
left it just as you see it."

"Oh, what a pity, and what a shame."

"Oh, Miss Gordon do you think the men who make our laws ever stop to
consider the misery, crime and destruction that flow out of the liquor
traffic? I have done all I could to induce him to abstain, and he has
abstained several months at a time and then suddenly like a flash of
lightning the temptation returns and all his resolutions are scattered
like chaff before the wind. I have been blamed for living with him, but
Miss Belle were you to see him in his moments of remorse, and hear his
bitter self reproach, and his earnest resolutions to reform, you would
as soon leave a drowning man to struggle alone in the water as to
forsake him in his weakness when every one else has turned against him,
and if I can be the means of s