ia, when the fields at night were white with
moonflowers, when a glorious harvest was assured, and all beasts and
birds and insects were garrulous of love and love's delight--upon May-
day, in short--was disclosed a terrible rift within poor Jasperson's
lute.

He had escorted his sweetheart to the annual picnic, and returning
late at night found Ajax and me enjoying a modest nightcap before
turning in. We asked him to join us, but he refused with some
asperity, and upon cross-examination confessed that he had promised
Miss Button to take the pledge at the next meeting of the lodge. Now,
we knew that Jasperson was the pink of sobriety, but one who
appreciated an occasional glass of beer, or even a mild cocktail; and
we had heard him more than once denounce the doctrines of the
Prohibitionists; so we were quite convinced that meek submission to
the dictates of the Grand Secretary of Corona Lodge was both
unnecessary and inexpedient. And we said so.

"Birdie knows I don't drink," stammered our hired man, "but she thinks
I'd ought to take the pledge as an example."

"An example," echoed Ajax. "To whom? To _us?_"

"She said an example, gen'lemen, jest--an example."

"But she meant us," said Ajax sternly. "Our names were mentioned.
Don't you deny it, Jasperson."

"They was," he admitted reluctantly. "She as't me, careless-like, if
you didn't drink wine with your meals, and I said yes. I'd ought to
have said no."

"What!" cried my brother, smiting the table till the decanter and
glasses reeled. "You think that you ought to have lied on our account.
Jasperson--I'm ashamed of you; I tremble for your future as the slave
of Miss Dutton."

"Wal--I didn't lie," said Jasperson defiantly; "I up and told her the
truth: that you had beer for supper, and claret wine, or mebbe sherry
wine, or mebbe both for dinner, and that you took a toddy when you
felt like it, an' that there was champagne down cellar, an' foreign
liquors in queer bottles, an' Scotch whisky, an'--_everything_.
She as't questions and I answered them--like an idiot! Gen'lemen, the
shame you feel for me is discounted by the shame I feel for myself.
I'd ought to have told Birdie that your affairs didn't concern her;
I'd ought to have said that you was honnerable gen'lemen whom I'm
proud to call my intimate friends; I'd ought to have said a thousand
things, but I sot there, and said-nothin'!"

He was standing as he spoke, emphasising his periods with semaphoric