“Yes, if I’m helped at it.” “Helped? Of course you’ll be helped, if you pray for it. You’ve repented; now address the throne of grace, and----” “Yes, I know,” interrupted Mr. Crupp. “I’m not entirely unacquainted with the Lord, if I _have_ sold rum. You know his sun shines on the just and the unjust, and I’ve had a good share of it. It’s help from men that I want, and am afraid that I can’t get it.” “Why, Crupp,” remonstrated the Squire, “you must have made something out of your business, if it _is_ an infernal one.” “I don’t mean that,” replied Mr. Crupp, a little tartly. “You’ve been on your little drunks when you were young, of course?” The Squire almost twitched Mr. Crupp off the sidewalk, as he exclaimed, with righteous indignation, “I never was drunk in my life.” “Oh!” said the convert. “Well, some have, and pledges won’t quiet an uneasy stomach, no way you can fix ’em. Them that never drank are all right, but the drinking boys that signed to-night’ll be awful thirsty in the morning.” “Well,” said the Squire, “_they_ must pray, and act like men.” “Some of ’em don’t believe in prayin’, and some of ’em can’t act like men, because ’tisn’t in ’em. There’s men that seem to need whisky as much as they need bread; leastways, they don’t seem able to do without it.” “If I’d been you, and believed that, Crupp,” replied the Squire, with noticeable coolness and deliberation, “I wouldn’t have signed the pledge; that is, I wouldn’t have stopped selling liquor.” “P’r’aps not,” returned the ex-rumseller; “but with me it’s different. There’s some men that b’lieves that sellin’ a woman a paper of pins, and measurin’ out a quart of tar for a farmer, is small business, an’ beneath ’em, but they stick to it. Now I believe I’m too much of a man to sell whisky, so I’ve stopped.” The Squire took the rebuke in silence; however much his face may have flushed, there were in Barton no tell-tale gas-lamps to make his discomfort visible. The Squire had grown rich as a vender of the thousand little things sold in country stores; he had many a time declared that storekeeping was a dog’s life, and that he, Squire Tomple, was everybody’s nigger--but he made no attempt to change his business. “What I mean,” continued Mr. Crupp, “by needin’ help, is this: I know just about how much every drinkin’ man in town takes, an’ when he takes it, an’ about when he gets on his sprees. Now, if there’s anybody to take an interest in these fellows at such times, they’re going to have plenty of chances mighty soon.” CHAPTER II. BUSINESS _vs._ PHILANTHROPY.