husband was lying upon the floor. "Go get the preacher a chair, Molly.
Not that one; it's got a leg broke. Oh, you needn't speak low," she
added, as John thanked the child softly; "he won't hear nothing before
to-morrow."

The lumberman lay in the sodden sleep with which he ended a spree. He had
rolled up his coat for a pillow, and had thrown one arm across his
purple, bloated face. Only the weak, helpless, open mouth could be seen.
His muscular hands were relaxed, and the whole prostrate figure was
pathetic in its unconsciousness of will and grotesque unhumanness. Fate
had been too strong for Tom Davis. His birth and all the circumstances of
his useless life had brought him with resistless certainty to this level,
and his progress in the future could only be an ever-hastening plunge
downward.

But the preacher did not consider fate when he turned and looked at the
drunken man. A stern look crept over the face which had smiled at Molly
but a moment before.

"This is the third time," he said, "that this has happened since Tom came
and told me he would try to keep sober. I had hoped the Spirit of God had
touched him."

"I know," the woman answered, turning the coat she was mending, and
moving the lamp a little to get a better light; "and it's awful hard on
me, so it is; that's where all our money goes. I can't get shoes for the
children's feet, let alone a decent rag to put on my back to wear of a
Sabbath, and come to church. It's hard on me, now, I tell you, Mr. Ward."

"It is harder on him," John replied. "Think of his immortal soul. Oh,