“Yes, I'm worse than a beast,” said Mack. He meant it. David, deep in his chair, his eyes on Mack's face, tapped his thumbs slowly together. “Mack,” he asked, “just how much of a hold has this drink got on you!” “Oh, I can stop any time I--” “Yes, so can Doc Benedict,” said David. “He stops whenever he has had his periodical and his nerves stop their howling for the alcohol. I don't mean that, Mack. Just how insistent is the wish for the stuff, when you haven't had it for a while, if it makes you forget Amy as you did to-day!” “Well, it is pretty insistent,” Mack admitted. “I don't mean to get the way I was this afternoon, dominie. Something starts me and I keep going.” David's thumbs tapped more and more slowly. “You still have the eyes of a man, Mack,” he said, “and you are still able to look me in the eyes like a man, Mack,” he said. “We ought to be able to beat this thing. Now go over and say good-night to Amy. She'll sleep better for seeing you as you are now.” The next day David learned more, and so did 'Thusia. What David learned was that the two months that had elapsed between Mack's engagement spree and his next was the longest period the young fellow had been sober for some time, and that Mack had already been docketed in the minds of those who knew him best as a hard and reckless drinker. It meant the fight would be harder and longer than David had hoped. What 'Thusia learned was that Amy had had a long talk with Mack after he had left David. “She did not tell him, David, but she told me, that she could not marry him if he let this happen. She can't marry a drunkard; no one would want her to; but if she throws him over he will be gone, David. She'll give him his chance, and she will help us--or let us help her--but when she is sure he is beyond help she will send him away. And when she sends him away--” “If she sends him away one great influence will be lost,” said David. “She must not send him away.” “If he comes to her drunk again,” said 'Thusia, as one who has saved the worst tidings until last, “she will have no more to do with him.” In less than a week Mack fell again, and Amy, her heart well-nigh broken, gave him back his ring, and ended the engagement. Then, indeed, began the hardest fight David ever made for a man against that man's self. There were nights when David walked the streets with Mack until the youth fell asleep as he walked, and days when Mack lay half stupid in David's great chair while the dominie scribbled his sermon notes at the desk beneath the spatter-work motto: “Keep an even mind under all circumstances.” Often David and old Doc Benedict sat in the same study and discussed Mack. David from the stand of one who wanted to save the young fellow, and Benedict as one who knew the alcohol because it had conquered him. “Now, in my case,” the doctor would say, quite as if he were discussing another person; and, “but on the other hand I had this gnawing pain in my stomach, while--” and so on.