They made a regular Red Lion evening of it, those two. A little before midnight Mr. Smethurst rose and said Good night. He had finished his bottle, and his law of temperance, always so faithfully observed, forbade him one drop more. The reader probably expects that Mr. Smethurst was intoxicated; but his genial nature was only yet more genial. He lighted his bed-candle with perfect steadiness, shook Ogden's hand affectionately, and mounted the stair step by step. When he got into his bedroom he undressed himself in a methodical manner, laid his clothes neatly on a chair, wound his watch up, and when he had assumed his white cotton night-cap, looked at himself in the glass. He put his tongue out, and held the candle close to it. The result of the examination was satisfactory, and he proceeded to pull down the corners of his eyes. This he did every night. The bugbear of his life was dread of a coming fit, and he fancied he might thus detect the premonitory symptoms. Meanwhile Mr. Ogden, left by himself, took up the "Sootythorn Gazette," and when Mr. Simpson entered he found him reading, apparently. "Beg pardon, sir," said Mr. Simpson, "but it's the rule to turn the gas out at twelve, and it's a few minutes past. I'll light you your bed-candle, sir, and you can sit up a bit later if you like. You'll find your way to your room." Ogden was too far gone to have any power of controlling himself now. The type danced before his eyes, the sentences ran into one another, and the sense of the phrases was a mystery to him. He kept drinking mechanically; and when at length he attempted to reach the door, the candlestick slipped from his hand, and the light was instantly extinguished. A man who is quite drunk cannot find the door of a dark room--he cannot even walk in the dark; his only chance of walking in broad daylight is to fix his eye steadily on some object, and when it loses its hold of that, to fasten it upon some other, and so on. Ogden stumbled against the furniture and fell. The deep insensibility of advanced drunkenness supervened, and he lay all night upon the floor. The servant-girl found him there the next morning when she came to clean the room. He could not go to Sootythorn that day, and the true reason for his absence soon became known to Dr. Bardly, who asked leave to drive over to Shayton to see a patient of his own. He drove directly to Milend. "Well, Mrs. Ogden," said the Doctor, "I've come wi' bad news for you this time. Your Isaac's made a beast of himself once more. He lay all night last night dead drunk upo' th' parlor-floor o' th' Blue Bell Inn i' Whittlecup." "Why--you don't say so, Dr. Bardly! Now, really, this _is_ provokin', and 'im as was quite reformed, as one may say. I could like to whip him--I could." "Well, I wish you'd just go to Whittlecup and take care of him while he stops there. If he'd nobbut stopped at Sootythorn I could have minded him a bit mysen, but there's nout like his mother for managin' him."