ad against the back of his chair and laughed in a manner
sufficiently hearty to have satisfied the request of his friend.

"Soured on the fraternity, have you?" he asked.

Gilbert Allison slowly raised himself to a sitting posture and, with an
elbow resting on either knee, transferred his study from the ceiling
pattern to that of the carpet. He did not answer the question.

"Crowley died," he at length observed.

"Yes--and I should think you would be the man to be glad. I imagine the
after feeling must be anything but pleasant when one has for years
helped fit a fellow creature for the gallows."

Gilbert Allison frowned between his hands and spoke sharply.

"It is a legal business," he said.

"Legal? Yes, legal--but you have sense enough to know that if it is
legal for you to sell, it must be legal for some other fellow to buy;
and if some other fellow spends his money for liquor he had the right to
drink it, and you can hardly be unreasonable enough to hold a man
responsible for what he does when the lining has been eaten out of his
stomach and his brain soaked with alcohol. Such a man is a legal
murderer, and the custom that breeds him should take care of the
finished production.

"Mind you, I am not giving a temperance lecture; that is out of my line.
But it has always seemed to me to be a rotten sort of justice that hangs
a man for doing what the government gives him a license to do."

Mr. Allison looked up suddenly.

"Do you suppose, Sammie, that Deacon Brown knows the Traffic as it
is--as we have seen it?"

"His church machinery grinds out resolutions annually of such a warlike
nature that I am inclined to believe he does," said the doctor grimly.

"He has been in every political caucus that I have, for the last five
years and has voted as I have from constable to President. I have voted
for the interests of the Trade. What has he been voting for?" demanded
Allison.

"I'll give it up," said Sammie, dusting the ashes from the end of his
cigar; "but the Lord have mercy on his brains if he thinks it has been
for 'temperance and morality.'"

Gilbert Allison arose and began a measured tread up and down the room.

"Laugh some more, Sammie! I have not yet recovered my normal condition.
I had as soon be dead as morbid. Laugh. Perhaps it will prove
infectious."

"I prefer to diagnose my case before applying a remedy," said the
doctor. "Tell me your symptoms. What ails you?"

"I am in a dilemma, Sammie-