It is at this point that Mr. Trimblerigg steps in. One day, taking down a book from the shelf in the little study, he discovered behind it a small square bottle of spirits: he did not have to taste or smell it--the label ‘old brandy’ was enough; and supposing in his innocence the word ‘old’ to indicate that it had passed its best use, at once his volatile mind was seized with the notion that here was a mother’s surprise waiting for him, and that he had only to provide the adder for the bottle and its contents to become his. And so with that calculating larkishness which made him do audacious things that when done had to be swallowed, he determined to give his mother a surprise in return. Going off in search of his adder and failing to get it himself, he gave another boy a penny for finding him a dead one. An hour later the adder was inside the brandy bottle behind the books; and an hour after that his Uncle James had achieved complete and lifelong conversion to total abstinence. The _dénouement_ presented itself to Mr. Trimblerigg at first with a shock of disappointment in the form of smashed glass, and his dead adder lying in a spent pool of brandy on the study floor; and only gradually did it dawn upon him after a cautious survey of the domestic situation that this was not as he had at first feared his mother’s angry rejection of the surprise he had prepared for her: on the contrary she was pleased with him. His uncle, he learned, was upstairs lying down, without appetite either for tea or supper. Mr. Trimblerigg heard him moaning in the night, and he came down to breakfast the next day a changed character. Within a year he had secured reinstatement in the ministry, and was become a shining light on the temperance platform, telling with great fervour anecdotes which give hope. There was, however, one story of a drunkard’s reformation which he never told: perhaps because, on after-reflection, though he had accepted their testimony against him, he could not really believe his eyes, perhaps because there are certain experiences which remain too deep and sacred and mysterious ever to be told.