No person was in the bar. I went out into the stable-yard, where I met the hostler with his head bound up. There was a dark blue circle around one of his eyes, and an ugly-looking red scar on his cheek. "Where is Mr. Slade?" I inquired. "In bed, and likely to keep it for a week," was answered. "How comes that?" "Naturally enough. There was fighting all around last night, and he had to come in for a share. The fool! If he'd just held his tongue, he might have come out of it with a whole skin. But, when the rum is in, the wit is out, with him. It's cost me a black eye and a broken head; for how could I stand by and see him murdered outright?" "Is he very badly injured?" "I rather think he is. One eye is clean gone." "Oh, shocking!" "It's shocking enough, and no mistake." "Lost an eye?" "Too true, sir. The doctor saw him this morning, and says the eye was fairly gouged out, and broken up. In fact, when we carried him upstairs for dead, last night, his eye was lying upon his cheek. I pushed it back with my own hand!" "Oh, horrible!" The relation made me sick. "Is he otherwise much injured?" "The doctor thinks there are some bad hurts inside. Why, they kicked and trampled upon him, as if he had been a wild beast! I never saw such a pack of blood-thirsty devils in my life!" "So much for rum," said I. "Yes, sir; so much for rum," was the emphatic response. "It was the rum, and nothing else. Why, some of the very men who acted the most like tigers and devils, are as harmless persons as you will find in Cedarville when sober. Yes, sir; it was the rum, and nothing else. Rum gave me this broken head and black eye." "So you had been drinking also?" "Oh, yes. There's no use in denying that." "Liquor does you harm." "Nobody knows that better than I do." "Why do you drink, then?" "Oh, just because it comes in the way. Liquor is under my eyes and nose all the time, and it's as natural as breathing to take a little now and then. And when I don't think of it myself, somebody will think of it for me, and say--'Come, Sam, let's take something.' So, you see, for a body such as I am, there isn't much help for it." "But ain't you afraid to go on in this way? Don't you know where it will all end?" "Just as well as anybody. It will make an end of me or--of all that is good in me. Rum and ruin, you know, sir. They go together like twin brothers." "Why don't you get out of the way of temptation?" said I. "It's easy enough to ask that question, sir; but how am I to get out of the way of temptation? Where shall I go, and not find a bar in my road, and somebody to say--'Come, Sam, let's take a drink'? It can't be done, sir, nohow. I'm a hostler, and I don't know how to be anything else." "Can't you work on a farm?" "Yes; I can do something in that way. But, when there are taverns and bar-rooms, as many as three or four in every mile all over the country, how are you to keep clear of them? Figure me out that."