penitent. Each of his sprees cost him several days in time and several dollars in money--a fact which no one realized more clearly than Tom himself; yet the feeling which had made him take the first drinks of these frightful series was one which had its seat in his own better nature, and which he had many times found more powerful than every influence he could bring to bear against it. He had listened to many a private lecture on the subject of his weakness, and had honestly admitted the truth of all that was said to him on the subject; he had signed many a pledge in the most agonized earnest, and had broken every one of them. On the Monday which followed the temperance meeting Tom Adams was nearly frantic with his old longing. The rest of Sunday had been a hindrance rather than a help to him, for he had already suffered several days from the effects of abstaining from his usual after-dinner and after-supper potations. The amount usually drank on these occasions had not been great, but the habit had for some years been so regular that his amazed and indignant physique protested against the change. Had he been capable of spiritually withdrawing himself from the world on the day of the Lord, he might have found help and strength; but he was as incapable of such a thing as were nine-tenths of the church-members in Barton. While he remained at home, his children were noisy enough to have hurried a rapt seer back to the realization of earthly things; when he went abroad he could not, as was his usual Sunday habit, step quietly into the back door of Bayne’s liquor-store. He strolled down to the stable-yard of the Barton House, hoping to find some one with whom he could talk horse; but the hostler was not in sight, and the stable-boy, who had been heard to say he “didn’t count much on them fellers what signed the pledge and went back on their friends,” eyed him with evident disgust. In the street he met people going to and from church and Sunday-school, and they looked at him as if their eyes were asking, “Are you keeping your pledge?” Then, to crown all, his wife gave him such a beseeching and yet doubting look every time he left the house and returned to it that he almost hated the good woman for her affectionate anxiety. Tom was up bright and early Monday morning, and though he soon mounted his wagon and left his wife’s eyes behind him, he found his longing for liquor as close to him as ever. Reaching the brick-yard, he was rather startled to find there Deacon Jones, his employer, and owner of a store as well as the kilns. The deacon looked at him as all the religious people had done on Sunday, and Tom inwardly cursed him. “How are you, Tom?” inquired the deacon, and then, without waiting for a reply, remarked: “There’s somethin’ I’ve been a-wantin’ to talk to you ’bout, Tom, an’ I was sure o’ catchin’ you here, so I came over before breakfast. You signed the pledge t’other night.”