me that queer way an' sidlin' away from me all the time; till
maybe at last you'd get plumb sick of me for keeps, an' light
out. An'--I'd rather have YOU than the booze, since I can't have
both of you. Bein' only a dawg and never havin' tasted good red
liquor, you can't know what a big bouquet I'm a-throwin' at you
when I say that, neither. I--Oh, let's call it a day and go to
sleep."


Next morning, in the course of nature, Link Ferris worked with a
splitting headache. He carried it and a bad taste in his mouth,
for the best part of the day.

But it was the last drink headache which marred his labor, all
that long and happy summer. His work showed the results of the
change. So did the meager hill farm. So did Link's system and his
pocketbook.

As he was a real, live human and not a temperance tract hero,
there were times when he girded bitterly at his self-enforced
abstinence. Where were times, too--when he had a touch of malaria
and again when the cutworms slaughtered two rows of his early
tomatoes--when he yearned unspeakably for the solace of an
evening at the Hampton tavern.

He had never been a natural drinker. Like many a better man he
had drunk less for what he sought to get than for what he sought
to forget. And with the departure of loneliness and the new
interest in his home, he felt less the need for wet conviviality
and for drugging his fits of melancholy.