The apartments in the Tappelmine mansion were so few that it was impossible for anything unusual to transpire without attracting the attention of all the inmates; so it followed that the children, beholding the actions of their parents, had gradually approached the bed with countenances whose blankness was painfully eloquent to the sick man. Tappelmine looked at them, and grew more miserable of visage; he hid his face beside his wife, groaned “No more whiskey if I die for it!” and jumped up and kissed each of his children, while Mrs. Tappelmine sobbed aloud, and Father Baguss, who, coming over a few moments before to talk business, had heard the simple word “whiskey,” and had since been jealously listening under the window, sneaked away muttering to himself, “After all I’ve done for him, I can’t even say to myself that _I_ saved him.” CHAPTER XVII. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER The fire which destroyed the Mississippi Valley Woolen Mills did such damage in the ranks of the temperance reformers that for a few months Crupp, Tomple, and several others had frequent cause to feel lonesome, while poor Father Baguss fell back upon the church for that comfort which, just after his first effort with Tappelmine, and before the fire, he had frequently found in the society of his self-approving brother stockholders. The mill was rebuilt, only a few of the owners of stock refusing to be assessed for their proportion of the loss; the mill made a very prosperous winter, and interested persons were not averse to talking about it; but after Deacon Jones’ speech was noised abroad, the mill was no longer a semi-holy topic of conversation, which was allowable even on the church steps on Sundays. Some of the men whose eyes had been opened toward themselves, on the occasion of the fire, were honest enough to confess to themselves, and to bring forth fruits meet for repentance; but the majority took refuge either in open or secret sophistry, with the comforting impression that they blinded others as effectually as they did themselves. The mass of the people, however--those who neither subscribed to temperance funds, nor mill stock, nor anything else, still looked on, and were plethoric of encouragement and criticism. When appealed to for help, their logic was simply bewildering, and almost as depraved as the same defensive and offensive weapon is in politics. Tomple was the man to do such work, said some, for he was the rich man of the village, and rich men are only God’s stewards; others suggested Captain Crayme, who had money, and who should be willing to spend considerable of it as a thank-offering for his own providential deliverance from the thraldom of drink. The irreligious thought that all such work should be done by the church, if churches were good for anything but to shout in; while the religious felt that the irreligious, among whom could be found nearly every drinker in the village, should expend whatever money was