The soul of the drunkard's daughter had gone where justice reigns supreme; where a God of justice watches the kingdoms of the earth and in mercy stays the doom that comes a certain penalty of the nation that sells its maids and youths to the rum fiend. Mrs. Crowley stood looking down on the wan face of her first-born. "Thank God she is happy! But it's hard--so hard!" A mother's love is the same the world around. This mother threw herself down by the bedside, and, holding one of the lifeless hands to her lips, sobbed bitterly. It seemed a desecration that just now the father should come stumbling into the scene, filling the room with the fumes of liquor and muttering drunken curses. But Maggie was beyond the reach of human harm. This would never pain her heart again. Neighbors came in, and Jean stepped out into the fresh air. It was nearly noontime. The streets were busy, and as she went towards home she saw the beer wagons driving in every direction, loaded with their freight of sorrow and pain and death. As she passed the palaces of gilded doom, arrayed in cut glass and mirrors, luring the souls of men and boys to hell, she thought of the Christian voters of the nation who allow it to be so because, bound by party ties and fooled by party leaders, they will not force this mighty issue to the front and demand its recognition at the ballot-box; and these words rang in her ears: "Because I have called and ye have refused, ye have set at naught all my counsel. I also will laugh at your calamity when your destruction cometh as a whirlwind." The words burned in her mind, and when she reached home she entered the library and without removing hat or gloves threw herself upon a sofa. It was not quite time for luncheon. The house was quiet. Vivian had, during the year, married the rector of a large and fashionable city church. For weeks before the eventful occasion life had been one round of shopping and fitting, of entertaining and rehearsing. Jean, as maid of honor, had figured conspicuously in the different functions, and for a time her mind was so absorbed with the fragrance and sunshine of life that its seamy side was forgotten. But after it was all over her thoughts and sympathies went out again to that family of the "other half" that she had so strangely become interested in, and the old question pressed itself for solution, why, in a Christian land of plenty, such a state of life for such vast numbers was allowable or even possible. With the sound of the dying girl's voice in her ears and the sight of a nation's legalized poison yet before her vision she rested, and so engrossed was she with her thoughts that she did not notice the entrance of her father. "A penny for your thoughts, my dear." Jean looked up suddenly. Then she caught her father's hand and drew him to her side. "I have seen a death to-day, father--a death, a drunkard, loads of beer and whisky." "Crowley dead at last?" "Maggie."