"My wife--" The Bishop had risen from his chair and Father Joseph Edward was supporting the swaying figure with the pale, earnest face.--"My wife loved me, and kept me and held me and watched over me as few men's wives have ever done. I stole poison with which to kill her. I stole poison from, from you, doctor!" He turned to Dr. Morton Sims and the doctor sat in his seat as if frozen to it by fear. "Yes! I stole it from you! You were away in Paris. You had been making experiments. In the cupboard in the laboratory which you had taken from old Admiral Custance, I knew that there were phials of organic poisons. My wife died of diphtheria. She died of it because I had robbed your bottles--I did so and took the poison home and arranged that Mary. . . ." There was a loud murmur in the body of the hall. A loud murmur stabbed with two or three faint shrieks from women. The Bishop again leant over the table with his hands over his face. Morton Sims was upon his feet. His hands were on Lothian's arm, his voice was pleading. "No! no!" he stammered. "You mustn't say these things. You, you----" Gilbert Lothian looked into the face of his old friend for a second. Then he brushed his arm away and came right to the edge of the platform. As he spoke once more he did not seem like any quite human person. His face was dead white, his hands fell at his sides--only his eyes were awake and his voice was vibrant. "I am a murderer. I killed and murdered with cunning, long-continued thought, the most sweet and saintly woman that I have ever known. She was my wife. Why I did this I need not say. You can all make in your minds and formulate the picture of a poisoned man lusting after a strange woman. "But I did this. I did this thing--you shall hear it and it shall reverberate in your minds. I am a murderer. I say it quite calmly, waiting for the inevitable result, and I tell you that Alcohol, and that Alcohol alone has made me what I am. "This, too, I must say. Disease, or demoniacal possession, as it may be, I have emerged from both. I have held God's lamp to my breast. "There is only one cure for Alcoholism. There is only one influence that can come and catch up and surround and help and comfort the sodden man. "That is the influence of the Holy Spirit." As he concluded there was a loud uproar in the Edward Hall. Upon the platform the well-known people there were gazing at him, surrounding him, saying, muttering this and that. The people in the body of the hall had risen in horrified groups and were stretching out their hands towards the platform. The Meeting which had promised so much in the Cause of Temperance was now totally dissolved--as far as its agenda went. The people dispersed very gradually, talking among themselves in low and horror-struck voices. It was now a few minutes before five o'clock. In the Committee room--where the bright fire was still burning--Gilbert Lothian remained.