moment's pause, he said--"If I live a thousand years, Agnes, the
scene of to-night shall never be repeated in my house! I feel not
only a sense of disgrace, but worse--a sense of guilt! What have we
been doing? Giving our influence and our money to help in the works
of elevating and refining society? or in the work of corrupting and
debasing it? Are the young men who left our house a little while
ago, as strong for good as when they came in? Alas! alas! that we
must answer, No! What if Albert Martindale were our son?"

This last sentence pierced me as if it had been a knife.

"He went out just now," continued Mr. Carleton, "so much intoxicated
that he walked straight only by an effort."

"Why did you let him go?" I asked, fear laying suddenly its cold
hand on my heart. "What if harm should come to him?"

"The worst harm will be a night at the station house, should he
happen to get into a drunken brawl on his way home," my husband
replied.

I shivered as I murmured, "His poor mother!"

"I thought of her," replied Mr. Carleton, "as I saw him depart just
now, and said to myself bitterly, 'To think of sending home from my
house to his mother a son in that condition!' And he was not the
only one!"

We were silent after that. Our hearts were so heavy that we could
not talk. It was near daylight before I slept, and then my dreams