is this: if you didn't sell liquor here,
you'd have no murder done in your place,--murder, sir. That man
was murdered. It's your fault, and it's mine, too. I ought not to
have let you the place for your business. It _is_ a cursed traffic,
and you and I ought to have found it out long ago. _I_ have. I hope
_you_ will. Now, I advise you, as a friend, to give up selling rum
for the future; you see what it comes to,--don't you? At any rate,
I will not be responsible for the outrages that are perpetrated in
my building any more,--I will not have liquor sold here. I refuse
to renew your lease. In three days you must move."

"Dr. Renton, you hurt my feelin's. Now, how would you--"

"Mr. Rollins, I have spoken to you as a friend, and you have no
cause for pain. You must quit these premises when your lease expires.
I'm sorry I can't make you go before that. Make no appeals to me,
if you please. I am fixed. Now, sir, good night."

The curtain was pulled up, and Rollins rolled over to his beloved
bar, soothing his lacerated feelings by swearing like a pirate,
while Dr. Renton strode to the door, and went into the street,
homeward.

He walked fast through the magical moonlight, with a strange feeling
of sternness, and tenderness, and weariness, in his mind. In this
mood, the sensation of spiritual and physical fatigue gaining on
him, but a quiet moonlight in all his reveries, he reached his
house. He was just putting his latch-key in the door, when it was
opened by James, who stared at him for a second, and then dropped
his eyes, and put his hand before his nose. Dr. Renton compressed
his lips on an involuntary smile.

"Ah! James, you're up late. It's near one."

"I sat up for Mrs. Renton and the young lady, sir. They're just
come, and gone up stairs."

"All right, James. Take your lamp and come in here. I've got something
to say to you." The man followed him into the library at once, with
some wonder on his sleepy face.

"First, put some coal on that fire, and light the chandelier. I
shall not go up stairs to-night." The man obeyed. "Now, James,
sit down in that chair." He did so, beginning to look frightened
at Dr. Renton's grave manner.

"James,"--a long pause,--"I want you to tell me the truth. Where
did you go to-night? Come, I have found you out. Speak."

The man turned as white as a sheet, and looked wretched with the
whites of his bulging eyes, and the great pimple on his nose awfully
distinct in the livid hue