“He came on a very worthy errand, I assure you, Mrs. Langford; he came to devote a certain sum of money to charitable objects--money acquired in a manner which is all too common in this our day and generation, but which he felt that he could not conscientiously keep.” “Humph! Some of the proceeds of his gambling, I suppose. It was a mere trick, Mr. Crosswell, and I hope you won’t let him impose upon you. I know his whole history, and it is thoroughly bad and disgustingly disreputable.” “But, my dear madam, are we not commanded----” “I know what you would say,” she broke in, with her hand on the door. “But you know my views, Mr. Crosswell. If a woman had done the tenth part of the evil things this man has, you would be the first to recommend sackcloth and ashes and a sisterhood, if not a solitary cell.” The indignant lady swept down the walk and stepped into her carriage. “Conscience money, indeed!” she said to herself. “It is much more likely that he made the whole thing an excuse to get a chance to talk to Dorothy. Well, I’ll put a stop to that!” But when Mrs. Langford’s carriage turned and rolled away, the good little man stood in the doorway of his study and shook his head sadly to the tune of a musing commentary on his latest visitor. “Strange, passing strange, that she can be so uncharitable, when her own son stands so sorely in need of the broadest charity! I do hope there is no dreadful day of retribution in store for her, but it is certainly tempting Providence to be so pitiless.” CHAPTER XX THE DEMONIAC THE rounds in the descending ladder of dissipation are many or few according to the temperament of the man who makes use of them: the man, I say, for women rarely descend--they fall. As in a galloping consumption it is not infrequently the strongest who succumb first, so in a moral lapse it is often the self-contained who set the pace. Antrim’s sudden plunge into the stream of excess was fairly illustrative of this. Beginning with the mild debauch in the company of Grotter, the division engineer, he went from bad to worse with such breathtaking celerity that the end of a single week found him shattered and nerveless, and already dependent upon stimulants for the inspiration needful to keep him up to his work. It was in such a plight that he began the day following his adventure with the “rook.” To be sure, there were, early in the morning, some feeble and shame-prompted motions toward amendment, but these were soon swept away by the onrush of appetite, newborn but mighty; and since he went fasting to his work, he began the earlier to borrow efficiency from the bottle.