e bag, I don't doubt, if
he's truly sorry for what he's done to Jane,--and it seems likely as he
is,--he'll write her back such a letter as will clear up all with Lady
Morville. But the next step is just to leave all in the Lord's hands
for the present."

And so it was left.

CHAPTER NINE.

CROSSBOURNE ANNUAL TEMPERANCE MEETING.

Week after week rolled by, and James Barnes continued firm to the pledge
which he had signed in Thomas Bradly's "Surgery." And now the usual
time for holding the annual meeting of the "Crossbourne Temperance
Society" had come round, and a meeting was accordingly advertised to be
held in the Town Hall. But mischief was apparently brewing; for all the
bills announcing the meeting which were posted on the walls were either
torn down or defaced the same night that they were put up,--a thing
which had never happened before. So it would seem that the enemies of
the temperance cause were prepared to offer more than ordinary
opposition, and that very possibly they might try to spoil or interrupt
the meeting itself.

And the friends of the temperance movement in Crossbourne had not to
look far to find the cause. There had been mutterings of a coming storm
for some time past. The lovers of strong drink, supported by those who
made capital out of their unnatural and ruinous thirst, had been laying
plans and concocting schemes for thwarting the steady advance which
temperance was making in the town. And now the sudden and shocking
death of poor Joseph Wright, so far from teaching any of his old
associates the lesson which God, who can bring good even out of man's
evil, would have had them learn from that frightful disaster, had only
made them plunge more deeply into the slough of drunkenness; and so
total abstainers and their principles got more abuse and hatred from
them than ever. Conscience _would_ be heard for a little while, roused
into utterance as it was by the death of their miserable companion; but
they hated that inward voice--it exasperated them. Drink they would
have, and cordially would they hate more and more all who would try,
however gently and lovingly, to draw them away from the intoxicating
cup. And now the desertion of James Barnes, as they considered it, to
the enemy, made the fire of their wrath and indignation burn with a
tenfold intensity.

"We're like to have hot work to-night, sir," said Bradly to the vicar,
as he sat in the vicarage study on the morning of t