"My poor child," he said, "could you imagine I was frowning at you?--brave little soldier that you are, braver and stronger in your way and place than I in mine. God bless you, no. I felt savage to think that in this nineteenth century, and right under the shadow of our church spires, this diabolical cruelty is permitted to go on year after year. Oh, I know all about it, Miss Mildred; you are not the first one by hundreds and hundreds. I wish I could give you more than sympathy, and that some other way would open--we must find some other way for you--but you have no idea how many are worse off in these bad times than you are--worthy people who are willing to work, but cannot get work. If it seems to you that I cannot do very much for you, remember that there are scores who, for the time, seem to have no resources at all. I trust you may soon hear such tidings from your father as will bring relief to both body and mind. And now, my child, don't let a morbid conscience add to your burdens. When you are as greatly in need of rest as you were last Sunday, don't come to the chapel. I'll take your class, or find a substitute." In a few minutes he was gone; but they were not alone, for he had made them conscious of One who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. How was the absent husband and father fulfilling the hopes that daily turned to him, but found no reward? He was literally writhing under chains that, to his horror, he could not break. He had found on shipboard that sudden and complete abstinence irom the drug brought a torture of mind and body that he could not endure, and now he was learning, in sickening fear, that he could not gradually reduce his daily allowance below a certain point without immediate sufferings beyond his fortitude to sustain. The room in the Inquisition, whose circular walls, studded with long, sharp spikes, gradually closed upon and pierced the victim, had its spiritual counterpart in his present condition. He was shut in on every side. If he made a push for liberty by abstaining from the drug, he was met and driven back by many nameless agonies. He seemed to recoil, inevitably, as if from steel barbs. Meanwhile the walls were closing in upon him. In order to prevent life from being a continuous burden, in order to maintain even the semblance of strength and manhood, so that he might have some chance of finding employment, he had to increase the quantity of morphia daily; but each succeeding indulgence brought nearer the hour when the drug would produce pain--pain only, and death. After a week or two of futile and spasmodic effort he drifted on in the old way, occasionally suffering untold agony in remorse and self-loathing, but stifling conscience, memory, and reason, as far as possible, by continuous stimulation.