The man hesitated. His good angel was pleading with him, but in vain.

Stamping his foot with rage and despair, he shouted, hoarsely, "It is
too late I am lost now."

And he tore the picture from its fastening. His wife sank back against
the wall with a groan as if her very soul were departing.

But before his rash steps could leave the desolation he had made, he
was confronted by the tall form of Dennis Fleet.

The man stared at him for a moment as if he had been an apparition,
and then said, in a hard tone, "Let me pass!"

Dennis had knocked for some time, but such was the excitement within
no one had regarded the sound. He had, therefore, heard the wife's
appeal and its answer, and from what he knew of the family from his
mission scholar, the boy Ernst, comprehended the situation in the main.
When, therefore, matters reached the crisis, he opened the door and
met the infatuated man as he was about to throw away the last relic
of his former self and happier life. With great tact he appeared as
if he knew nothing, and quietly taking a chair he sat down with his
back against the door, thus barring egress. In a pleasant, affable
tone, he said: "Mr. Bruder, I came to see you on a little business
to-night. As I was in something of a hurry, and no one appeared to
hear my knock, I took the liberty of coming in."

The hungry little ones looked at him with their round eyes of childish
curiosity, and for a time ceased their clamors. The wife sank into a