"You frighten me, mother," exclaimed the young man. "What do you
mean by all this? Has any one been filling your mind with lies about
me?"

"No; none would dare speak to me of you in anything but praise, But
I want you to promise to-night, Ellis. I must have that, and then my
heart will be at ease. It will be a little thing for you, but for me
rest and peace and confidence in the place of terrible anxieties."

"Promise! What? Some wild fancies have taken hold of you."

"No wild fancies, but a fear grounded in things of which I would not
speak. Ellis, I want you to give up the use of wine."

The young man did not answer immediately. All the nervous
restlessness he had exhibited died out in a moment, and he stood
very still, the ruddy marks of excitement going out of his face. His
eyes were turned from his mother and cast upon the floor.

"And so it has come to this," he said, huskily, and in a tone of
humiliation. "My mother thinks me in danger of becoming a
drunkard--thinks me so weak that I cannot be trusted to take even a
glass of wine."

"Ellis!" Mrs. Whitford again laid her hand upon the arm of her son.
"Ellis," her voice had fallen to deep whisper, "if I must speak, I
must. There are ancestors who leave fatal legacies to the
generations that come after them, and you are one accursed by such a
legacy. There is a taint in your blood, a latent fire that a spark