and walked miles through the rain and snow to get it. I believe
I would have done it if I had known I was going next moment to hell."
He said it had ruined him; said so quite calmly; did not appear to have
any special remorse about it; at least, never professed any; said it used to
trouble him, but he had got over it now. He had had a plantation -- that is,
his mother had had -- and he had been quite successful for a while;
but he said, "A man can't drink liquor and run a farm," and the farm had gone.

I asked him how?

"I sold it," he said calmly; "that is, persuaded my mother to sell it.
The stock that belonged to me had nearly all gone before.
A man who is drinking will sell anything," he said. "I have sold
everything in the world I had, or could lay my hands on. I have never got
quite so low as to sell my old gray jacket that I used to wear when I rode
behind old Joe. I mean to be buried in that -- if I can keep it."

He had been engaged to a nice girl; the wedding-day had been fixed;
but she had broken off the engagement. She married another man.
"She was a mighty nice girl," he said, quietly. "Her people did not like
my drinking so much. I passed her not long ago on the street.
She did not know me." He glanced down at himself quietly. "She looks older
than she did." He said that he had had a place for some time, did not
drink a drop for nearly a year, and then got with some of the old fellows,
and they persuaded him to take a little. "I cannot touch it. I have either
got to drink or let it alone -- one thing or the other," he said.
"But I am all right now," he declared triumphantly, a little of the old fire
lighting up in his face. "I never expect to touch a drop again."

He spoke so firmly that I was persuaded to make him a little loan,