Briefly this is what had taken place: the boy died soon after I left him the day before, and in a very short time the father had pawned all his clothes and stayed out during the night. He came back the next morning at nine o’clock drunk, and went up to the room where his son’s body lay, intending to take away the bed-clothing, etc. A struggle had thereupon ensued between the girl and her father for possession of them; and as he wanted the mattress, he had actually thrown the body on to the floor. A cheque for fifteen pounds was forwarded by the trustees for funeral expenses. A coffin was brought, but the rest of the money the father spent, never coming to the house till it was gone. More money was received from the trustees, and the day of the funeral came on. I had promised the youth to see the last of him and to be present at the funeral. The father did not come near the house that day, and it seemed as though the funeral would pass off quietly, but just as we got into the main road, he joined us in a cab. Soon there was a great shout, and a number of women closed around the cab; sticks and stones were thrown at him, and an effort made to drag him out and lynch him. He did get roughly handled, but the cabman, having a good horse, vigorously plied his whip, and drove through the crowd, waiting for us further on. There was no other disturbance, for in a few days the wife went down to the trustees and left her husband. Three months afterwards I again met him, but this time he stood in the dock, when a serious charge was made and proved against him. The last view I had of him was as he stepped into the prison-van, to be conveyed to the punishment he so richly merited. So passed from my knowledge the worst dipsomaniac it has been my lot to meet with. Like Lucifer from heaven, he fell to the lowest depth, and evil became his good; for it is always so: the greater the height from which a man falls, the lower the depths to which he descends. As in the physical world, so in the moral world, there is a law of gravitation. I have tried to understand these men, and I have failed to do so. I have taken some measure of the force that impels them, but neither I nor anyone else other than a dipsomaniac can realize in anything approaching its fulness the might and dreadfulness of the power that inhabits them. CHAPTER IX CRIMINALS