"Hope, through our child. Innocence has prevailed over vice and cruelty. She came to the strong, evil, passionate man, and, in her weakness and innocence, prevailed over him. God made her fearless and eloquent." A year afterwards a stranger came again that way, and stopped at the "Stag and Hounds." As before, Jenks was behind his well-filled bar, and drinking customers came and went in numbers. Jenks did not recognize him until he called for water, and drank a full tumbler of the pure liquor with a hearty zest. Then he knew him, but feigned to be ignorant of his identity. The stranger made no reference to the scene he had witnessed there a twelvemonth before, but lingered in the bar for most of the day, closely observing every one that came to drink. Leslie was not among the number. "What has become of the man and the little girl I saw here, at my last visit to Milanville?" said the stranger, speaking at last to Jenks. "Gone to the devil, for all I care," was the landlord's rude answer, as he turned off from his questioner. "For all you care, no doubt," said the stranger to himself. "Men often speak their real thoughts in a passion." "Do you see that little white cottage away off there, just at the edge of the wood? Two tall poplars stand in front." Thus spoke to the stranger one who had heard him address the landlord. "I do. What of it?" he answered. "The man you asked for lives there." "Indeed!" "And what is more, if he keeps on as he has begun, the cottage will be all his own in another year. Jenks, here, doesn't feel any good blood for him, as you may well believe. A poor man's prosperity is regarded as so much loss to him. Leslie is a good mechanic--one of the best in Milanville. He can earn twelve dollars a week, year in and year out. Two hundred dollars he has already paid on his cottage; and as he is that much richer, Jenks thinks himself just so much poorer; for all this surplus, and more too, would have gone into his till, if Leslie had not quit drinking." "Aha! I see! Well, did Leslie, as you call him, ever try to get a drink here, since the landlord promised never to let him have another drop?" "Twice to my knowledge." "And he refused him?" "Yes. If you remember, he said, in his anger, '_May I be cursed_, if I sell him another drop.'" "I remember it very well." "That saved poor Leslie. Jenks is superstitious in some things. He wanted to get his custom again,--for it was well worth having,--and he was actually handing him the bottle one day, when I saw it, and reminded him of his self-imprecation. He hesitated, looked frightened, withdrew the bottle from the counter, and then, with curses, drove Leslie from his bar-room, threatening, at the same time, to horsewhip him if ever he set a foot over his threshold again."