"It's a downright shame!" exclaimed the neighbor, immediately. "If I had my way with the lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, I'd see that he did something useful, if it was to break stone on the road. Were it my husband, instead of yours, that he enticed into his bar, depend on't he'd get himself into trouble." While this conversation was going on, a little girl, not over ten years of age, sat listening attentively. After a while she went quietly from the room, and throwing her apron over head, took her way, unobserved by her mother, down the road. Where was little Lizzie going? There was a purpose in her mind: She had started on a mission. "O, if they wouldn't sell him liquor!" These earnest, tearful words of her, mother had filled her thoughts. If Mr. Jenks wouldn't sell her father anything to drink, "there would be no more trouble." How simple, how direct the remedy! She would go to Mr. Jenks, and ask him not to let her father have any more liquor, and then all would be well again. Artless, innocent child! And this was her mission. The tavern kept by Jenks, the laziest man in Milanville,--he was too lazy to work, and therefore went to tavern-keeping,--stood nearly a quarter of a mile from the poor tenement occupied by the Leslies. Towards this point, under a hot, sultry sun, little Lizzie made her way, her mind so filled with its purpose that she was unconscious of heat of fatigue. Not long before a traveller alighted at the tavern. After giving directions to have his horses fed, he entered the bar-room, and went to where Jenks stood, behind the counter. "Have something to drink?" inquired the landlord. "I'll take a glass of water, if you please." Jenks could not hide the indifference at once felt towards the stranger. Very deliberately he set a pitcher and a glass upon the counter, and then turned partly away. The stranger poured out a tumbler of water, and drank it off with an air of satisfaction. "Good water, that of yours, landlord," said he. "Is it?" was returned, somewhat uncourteously. "I call it good water--don't you?" "Never drink water by itself." As Jenks said this, he winked to one of his good customers, who was lounging, in the bar. "In fact, it's so long since I drank any water, that I forgot how it tastes. Don't you, Leslie?" The man, to whom this was addressed, was not so far lost to shame as Jenks. He blushed and looked confused, as he replied,-- "It might be better for some of us if we had not lost our relish for pure water."