ut fell into habits of intemperance. Seeing himself
drifting to certain ruin, he made a vigorous effort to reform his life.
Experience told him that his only safety lay in complete abstinence,
and this rule he adopted. For many months he remained firm. But he fell
at your house. The odor of wine that pervaded all the air and stirred
within him the long-sleeping appetite, the freedom he saw around him,
the invitations that met him from distinguished men and beautiful
women, the pressure of a hundred influences upon his quickened desires,
bore him down at last, and he fell.

"I heard the whole sad story to-day," continued Mr. Elliott. He did not
even attempt to struggle up again, but abandoned himself to his fate.
Soon after, he was removed from the command of this department and sent
off to the Western frontier, and finally court-martialed and dismissed
from the army.

"To his wife, who was deeply attached to him, General Abercrombie was
when sober one of the kindest and most devoted of husbands, but a crazy
and cruel fiend when drunk. It is said that on the night he went home
from your house last winter strange noises and sudden cries of fear
were heard in their room, and that Mrs. Abercrombie when seen next
morning looked as if she had just come from a bed of sickness. She
accompanied him to the West, but I learned today that since his
dismissal from the army his treatment of her has been so outrageous and
cruel that she has had to leave him in fear of her life, and is now
with her friends, a poor broken-hearted woman. As for the general, no
one seems to know what has become of him."

"And the responsibility of all this you would lay at my door?" said Mr.
Birtwell, in a husky voice, through which quivered a tone of anger.
"But I reject your view of the case entirely. General Abercrombie fell
because he had no strength of purpose and no control of his appetite.
He happened to trip at my house--that is all. He would have fallen
sooner or later somewhere."

"Happened to trip! Yes, that is it, Mr. Birtwell; you use the right
word. He tripped at your house. But who laid the stone of stumbling in
his path? Suppose there had been no wine, served to your guests, would
he have stumbled on that fatal night? If there had been no wine served,
would Archie Voss have lost his way in the storm or perished in the icy
waters? No, my friend, no; and if there had been no wine served at your
board that night, three human lives which h