A pore man in distres would take it kindly of the minester to mete him as sune as possibel to-nite to Ragged Rock. i am a miserbul Drunkhard and i want to Knock Off. i heer when folks talk with you they stop Drinkin. i wish youde talk to me so I would stop Yours JACK HADDOCK. XVI. Bayard re-read this message thoughtfully. He could hardly have told why it perplexed him. Up and down the shores and streets of Windover no cry of misery or of guilt had ever yet lifted itself to him in vain. Such appeals were common enough. Often it would happen that a stranger would stop him in the street, and use much the same naïve language: “I hear when you talk to folks they stop drinking. I wish you’d talk to me.” Contrary to his custom in such matters, he showed this slip of paper to Mrs. Granite. “Mr. Bayard, sir,” she said, with that prompt feminine fear which sometimes takes the place of reliable good sense, “don’t you go a step!” Bayard did not reply. He turned away musing, and paced up and down between the larkspurs. True, the place was lonely, and the hour late. But the vagaries of disgraced men are many, and nothing was more possible than that some fisherman, not wholly sober, and not half drunk, should take it into his befuddled brain that an interview with the minister located at a safe distance from nagging wife, crying child, or jeering messmate, or, let us say, far removed from the jaws of Trawl’s door, should work the magic or the miracle for which the morally defective are always waiting. “I see no reason why I should not comply with this request,” he said decidedly. “Mr. Bayard, sir,” urged Mrs. Granite, “it’s a thing I don’t like to be her who tells you, but it’s time somebody did. There’s them in this town wouldn’t stop at nothing, they have that feeling to you.” “To _me_?” cried Bayard, opening his hazel eyes as wide as a child’s. “Rum done it,” stammered Mrs. Granite, instinctively using the three familiar words which most concisely covered the ground. “It’s your temperance principles. They ain’t pop’lar. They affect your standing in this community.” This was the accepted phrase in Windover for all such cases made and provided. It was understood to contain the acme of personal peril or disgrace. To talk to a man about “your standing in this community” was equivalent to an insult or a scandal. Poor Mrs. Granite, an affectionate and helpless parrot, reëchoed this terrible language, and trembled. She felt as if she had said to the minister, Your social ruin is complete for all time, throughout the civilized world.