urish
Crabbe raised the coveted tumbler to his lips and drank it off.

Appalled and conscience-stricken, Ringfield fell back against the door,
the room being small and contracted, and covered his face with his
hands. In ten minutes the guide was coarsely drunk, but sensible
enough to ring the bell and demand more whisky. Committed to his wrong
course, the minister interfered no longer, and suffered a servant to
deliver the stuff into his hands at the door, on the plea that the
gentleman inside was not very well. Thus things went from bad to
worse, Crabbe noisily reciting passages from English poets and the
Greek anthology, and insisting on reading his lines to Ringfield after
a third "go" of spirits.

"How does this strike you?" he cried, whipping a narrow piece of
writing-paper out of his pocket; "I've written many an epitaph, but
none that I liked better than this:--

"Chaste I was not, neither honourable, only kind;
And lo--the streets with mourners at my death were lined!"

And he added gravely that it was in the best Greek style. "I've got
another, 'On a Woman Who Talked too Much,' but I can't remember it.
Don't you write poetry? You don't? Oh! I remember now. You're the
parson. Want to convert me, want to reform me, eh, Ringfield? You
write something better than poetry--sermons. Look here--Ringfield--did
you know I was intended for the Church myself at one time? I was.
Honour bright--before I came out to this blasted country--excuse
freedom of speech--before I knew you, and before I met Henry Clairville
and Pauline."

The name seemed to convey some understanding of his condition with it,
and he stopped a minute in his talk. The other man was still leaning
by the door; it might be expedient to keep people of the house from
seeing Crabbe's condition.

"Now--don't you say this isn't your fault," continued the guide,
shaking his head wisely. "You ordered the whisky, you know you did.
You were 'chilled to the bone' and you ordered it. And you're a parson
all the same, can't get over that, can't help yourself, can you,
Ringfield? Remember meetin' you many years ago somewhere, there was
whisky too on that occasion, and you c'ngratulated me, you know, on
going to be married. But you were--premature, that's what you were,
Ringfield--premature. Wonder where I met you before! Must have been
in the Old Country; must have been at Oxford together."

He now raised his head, and drinking off the fo