ad gathered around John Anderson and
Thomas Gary, and one of them said, "Mr. Gary you have had sad
experience, why don't you give up drinking yourself?"

"Give it up! because I can't. To-day I would give one half of my farm if
I could pass by this saloon and not feel that I wanted to come in. No, I
feel that I am a slave. There was a time when I could have broken my
chain, but it is too late now, and I say young men take warning by me
and don't make slaves and fools of yourselves."

"Now, Tom Cary," said John Anderson, "it is time for you to dry up, we
have had enough of this foolishness, if you can't govern yourself, the
more's the pity for you."

Just then the newsboy came along crying: _"Evening Mail. All about the
dreadful murder! John Coots and James Loraine. Last edition. Buy a
paper, Sir! Here's your last edition, all 'bout the dreadful murder"._

"John Coots," said several voices all at once, "Why he's been here a
half dozen times today."

"I've drank with him," said one, "at that bar twice since noon. He had a
strange look out of his eyes; and I heard him mutter something to
himself."

"Yes," said another, "I heard him say he was going to kill somebody,
'one or the other's got to die,' what does the paper say?"

"LOVE, JEALOUSY, AND MURDER."

"The old story," said Anderson, looking somewhat relieved, "A woman's at
the bottom of it."

"And liquor," said Tom Cary, "is at the top of it."

"I wish you would keep a civil tongue in your head," said Anderson,
scowling at Cary.

"Oh! never mind; Tom, will have his say. He's got a knack of speaking
out in meeting."

"And a very disagreeable knack it is."

"Oh never mind about Tom, read about the murder, and tend to Tom some
other time."

Eagerly and excitedly they read the dreadful news. A woman, frail and
vicious, was at the bottom; a woman that neither of those men would have
married as a gracious gift, was the guilty cause of one murder, and when
the law would take its course, two deaths would lie at her door. Oh, the
folly of some men, who, instead of striving to make home a thing of
beauty, strength and grace, wander into forbidden pastures, and reap for
themselves harvests of misery and disgrace. And all for what? Because of
the allurements of some idle, vain and sinful woman who has armed
herself against the peace, the purity and the progress of the fireside.
Such women are the dry rot in the social fabric; they dig in the dark
beneath the foun