Oh, Steady Acton! what has made thee drink and swear? Oh, Honest Roger! what has planted guile, and suspicion, and malice in thy heart? Are these the mere first-fruits of coveting and having? Is this the earliest blessing of that luck which many long for--the finding of a crock of gold? We would not enlarge upon the scene; a painful one at all times, when man forgets his high prerogative, and drowns his reason in the tankard: but, in a Roger Acton's case, lately so wise, temperate, and patient, peculiarly distressing. Its chief features were these. Grace tasted nothing, but mournfully looked on: once only she attempted to expostulate, but was met--not with fierce oaths, nor coarse chidings, nor even with idiotic drivelling--oh no! worse than that she felt: he replied to her with the maudlin drunken promise, "If she'd only be a good girl, and let him bide, he'd give her a big Church-bible, bound in solid gold--that 'ud make the book o' some real value, Grace." Poor broken-hearted daughter--she rushed to her closet in a torrent of tears. As for Mary Acton, she was miraculously meek and dumb; all the scold was quelled within her; the word "blood" was the Petruchio that tamed that shrew; she could see a plenty of those crimson spots, which might "The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green, one red," dancing in the sun-beams, dotted on the cottage walls, sprinkled as unholy water, over that foul crock. Would not the money be a curse to them any how, say nothing of the danger? If things went on as they began, Mary might indeed have cause for fear: actually, she could not a-bear to look upon the crock; she quite dreaded it, as if it had contained a "bottled devil." So there she sat ever so long--silent, thoughtful, and any thing but comfortable. What became of Roger until next day at noon, neither he nor I can tell: true, his carcase lay upon the floor, and the two-gallon jar was empty. But, for the real man, who could answer to the name of Roger Acton, the sensitive and conscious soul--that was some where galloping away for fifteen hours in the Paradise of fools: the Paradise? no--the Maelstrom; tossed about giddily and painfully in one whirl of tumultuous drunkenness. CHAPTER XVI. HOW THE HOME WAS BLEST THEREBY.