ering gloom. If the reader will go back
over the incidents and characters of this story, he will recall a scene
between Mrs. Whitford and her son Ellis, the accepted lover of Blanche
Birtwell, and will remember with what earnestness the mother sought to
awaken in the mind of the young man a sense of danger, going so far as
to uncover a family secret and warn him of a taint in his blood. It
will also be remembered how the proud, self-confident young man
rejected, her warnings and entreaties, and how wine betrayed him.

The humiliation that followed was deep, but not effective to save him.
Wine to his inherited appetite was like blood to the wolf-nature. To
touch it was to quicken into life an irrepressible desire for more. But
his pride fought against any acknowledgment of his weakness, and
particularly against so public an acknowledgment as abstinence when all
around him were taking wine. Every time he went to a dinner or
evening-party, or to any entertainment where wine was to be served, he
would go self-admonished to be on guard against excess, but rarely was
the admonition heeded. A single glass so weakened his power of
restraint that he could not hold back his hand; and if it so happened
that from any cause this limit was forced upon him, as in making a
morning or an evening call, the stimulated appetite would surely draw
his feet to the bar of some fashionable saloon or hotel in order that
it might secure a deeper satisfaction.

It was not possible, so impelled by appetite and so indulging its
demands, for Ellis Whitford to keep from drifting out into the fatal
current on whose troubled waters thousands are yearly borne to
destruction.

After her humiliation at Mrs. Birtwell's, a smile was never seen upon
the mother's face. All that she deemed it wise to say to her son when
he awoke in shame next morning she said in tears that she had no power
to hold back. He promised with solemn asseverations that he would never
again so debase himself, and he meant to keep his promise. Hope stirred
feebly in his mother's heart, but died when, in answer to her
injunction, "Touch not, taste not, handle not, my son. Herein lies your
only chance of safety," he replied coldly and with irritation:

"I will be a man, and not a slave. I will walk in freedom among my
associates, not holding up manacled wrists."

Alas! he did not walk in freedom. Appetite had already forged invisible
chains that held him in a fatal bondage. It was no