at betrayed more concern than she had
meant to express.

The doctor gave a little shrug, but replied:

"His earnest purpose in life will be his protection, Mrs. Whitford.
Work, ambition, devotion to a science or profession have in them an
aegis of safety. The weak and the idle are most in danger."

"It is wrong, I have sometimes thought," said Mrs. Whitford speaking
both to the physician and the clergyman, "for society to set so many
temptations before its young men--the seed, as some one has forcibly
said, of the nation's future harvest."

"Society doesn't care much for anything but its own gratification,"
replied Dr. Hillhouse, "and says as plainly as actions can do it 'After
me the deluge.'"

"Rather hard on society," remarked Mr. Elliott.

"Now take, for instance, its drinking customs, its toleration and
participation in the freest public and private dispensation of
intoxicating liquors to all classes, weak or strong, young or old. Is
there not danger in this--great danger? I think I understand you, Mrs.
Whitford."

"Yes, doctor, you understand me;" and dropping her voice to a lower
tone, Mrs. Whitford added: "There are wives and mothers and sisters not
a few here to-night whose hearts, though they may wear smiles on their
faces, are ill at ease, and some of them will go home from these
festivities sadder than when they came."

"Right about that," said the doctor to himself as he turned away, a
friend of Mrs. Whitford's having come up at the moment and interrupted
the conversation--"right about that; and you, I greatly fear, will be
one of the number."

"Our friend isn't just herself to-night," remarked Mr. Elliott as he
and Dr. Hillhouse moved across the room. "A little dyspeptic, maybe,
and so inclined to look on the dark side of things. She has little
cause, I should think, to be anxious for her own son or husband. I
never saw Mr. Whitford the worse for wine; and as for Ellis, his
earnest purpose in life, as you so well said just now, will hold him
above the reach of temptation."

"On the contrary, she has cause for great anxiety," returned Dr.
Hillhouse.

"You surprise me. What reason have you for saying this?"

"A professional one--a reason grounded in pathology."

"Ah?" and Mr. Elliott looked gravely curious.

"The young man inherits, I fear, a depraved appetite."

"Oh no. I happen to be too well acquainted with his father to accept
that view of the case."

"His father is well enough," re