Knowing this, I was greatly surprised, after our return home, to see the young orator go up to the sideboard and drink off, at one draught, a goblet of the _porter_ which had been ordered for Anna! _She_ saw it, too, and for an instant her face was pressed against that of her sleeping boy; and when next the lamp-light fell upon it, I saw there traces of tears, while a faint smile played around her mouth, as she said, “I am afraid, Herbert, your audience would hardly think your theory and practice agree, could they see you now.” The words were ill-timed; for they awoke the young man’s resentment, and with a flushed brow he retorted angrily, that “if porter were good for her, it was for him; he saw no difference between a drinking woman and a drinking man; except, indeed, that the former was the most despicable.” The next morning, the bottles of porter were gone from the sideboard; but out in the orchard, where the grass of an early spring was just starting into life, they lay shattered in a hundred pieces. Would, oh, would that she, the wife of little more than a year, could thus easily have broken the habits of him she loved better than her life. But it could not be; and all through the bright spring days she drooped, and faded, and struggled hard to keep from me the fatal truth; and when the warm breath of summer was over all the land; when the robins’ song was heard in the maple trees; and the roses blossomed by the open door, they brought no gladness to her heart; no love-light to her eye, save when she looked upon her baby; now a playful, handsome child, the pet and idol of the house. At last, Aunt Charlotte wrote to me, asking to be assured of her son’s safety; and then poor Anna begged me not to tell that the wine-cup was his companion at morn; his solace at noon, and his comfort at night. Yielding to her entreaties, I answered evasively; and thus the shock, when it came to that mother’s heart, was harder far to bear, from the perfect security she had felt. At Meadow Brook, too, they little dreamed how their absent daughter wept and prayed over her fallen husband, who, day after day, made rapid strides down the road to death; for, on her bended knees, Anna implored me to keep her shame a secret yet a little longer; and with this request I also complied, doing whatever I could to smooth the thorny pathway she was treading. CHAPTER XVII. THE DARK MAN. The long summer days had merged into autumn, whose hazy breath floated like a misty veil over the distant hills. Slowly and noiselessly the leaves were dropping one by one from the maple trees, strewing the withered grass with a carpet of gorgeous hue. The birds had sung their farewell song to their summer nests, and were off for a warmer clime; while here and there busy hands and feet were seen gathering in the autumnal stores.