raged him, and then come home, perfectly sober perhaps,
but staggering from mere weakness. He did not care for deep drinking in
the least, but the number of magnums he had assisted in flooring, when
on a regimen of "three glasses of sherry," would have made a double row
of nails round the coffin of a larger man. Nature, however, being a
Dame, won't stand being slighted, or having her admonitions disregarded,
and the way she asserted herself on the morrow was retributive in the
extreme. Harry was always so _very_ ill after one of those nights "upon
the war-path." On such occasions, his feelings, without being quite
remorseful, were beautifully and curiously penitent; they manifested
themselves chiefly by an extraordinary ebullition of the domestic
affections. "Bring me my children" (he had two tiny ones), he would cry
on waking, just as another man would call for brandy and soda; and,
strange to say, the presence of those innocents seemed to have a
similarly invigorating and refreshing effect: during all that day he
would make pilgrimages to their cribs, and gaze upon them sleeping with
the reverence of an old _devote_ kneeling before the shrine of her most
efficacious saint. Then he would go forth, and return with a present for
his wife, bearing an exact proportion in value to the extent and
duration of the past misdemeanor; so that her jewel-case and
writing-table soon became as prettily suggestive as the votive chapel of
Notre Dame des Dunes. Very unnecessary were these peace-offerings; for
that dear little woman never dreamt of "hitting him when he was down,"
or taking any other low advantage of his weakness. She would make his
breakfast beamingly, at all untimely hours, and otherwise pet and caress
him, so that he might have been a knight returning wounded from some
Holy War, instead of a discomfited scalp-hunter, bearing still evident
traces of the "war-paint." A stern old lady told her once that such
condonation of offenses was unprincipled and immoral. It may be so, but
I can not think the example is likely to be dangerously contagious.
Whatever happens, there will always remain a sufficiency of matronly
Dicaearchs, over whose judgment-seats the legend is very plainly
inscribed, _Nescia flecti_.

These Ember days formed the only exceptions to the remarkably easy way
in which Molyneux took every thing; there seemed to be no rough places
about his disposition for trouble or care to take hold of. Hunting four
days a