On the morning we introduced him to the reader he took the train to Charlotte and secured a berth on the steamer _Corinthian_ for a port on the Canadian side, and as it would not start for an hour after he arrived, he thought he would endeavor to compose his perturbed mind by a quiet walk up the river. For in his sober moments he suffered intensely from the "pricks of an outraged conscience," and more than once he had been tempted to take his own life, but the thought of wife and children had restrained him from the rash and cowardly act. It may be, there was intermingled with that the thought, as Shakespeare says-- "Which makes cowards of us all, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of." He now resolved, God helping him, he would never drink again, but he would establish a home in the strange land whither he was journeying, and live a sober, industrious life. But even as he made these resolves his craving, burning appetite came tempting him; and as he strove against it, he shut his teeth and knit his brow, and involuntarily clenched his hand as if about to struggle with a mortal foe, and stamped his foot as he hissed through his clenched teeth, "I will be free." Ah, Richard! don't begin to boast before you have gained the victory, depend more upon God than self, you surely need his aid, for here comes a tempter. "Hallo, Ashton, is that you? What is the matter with you? Why, one would suppose you had an attack of the blues. At what were you glaring so fiercely? You look as if you had a live Fenian before you and was striking for the Old Land with a determination to give no quarter. How came you here, and whither are you bound?" And the speaker, with a quizzical smile upon his face, which half concealed and half revealed an underplay of devilish mockery, put his hand familiarly upon the shoulder of Ashton, and then grasped him by the hand and gave it a hearty shake. But if a good judge of human nature had been by, he would have concluded his manner was assumed for the occasion--that he was simply acting, and was a failure at the role he had assumed. I have not given to the reader the expletives with which he adorned his conversation, nor do I intend to do so, for though he, like others who indulge in the habit of swearing, may have thought it was both ornamental and emphatic, I don't think so. Besides, I have hopes that these pages may be read by the young, and I do not wish to give, even in the conversations which I may transcribe, anything that is profane or impure; for if I did I might inoculate their young minds with an evil virus, which I would not knowingly do. This person, who now accosted Ashton, was the one who acted imp to his satanic majesty in leading him to his last fall, and here he was again to tempt him. Well would it be for you, Richard Ashton, if you would contemptuously spurn him as you would kick a rabid dog from your path.