Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-03-03
The House at Murravfield.

| ~@ONoO w AtAaA iiOlus
How John passed the evening, in
what windy confusion of MIND, in what
squalls of anger and Ia Is Of sick col.
lapse, in what pacing of streets and
plunging into public houses, it would
profit little to relate. His misery, II
1t were not progressive, yet tended in
no way to diminish; for in proportion
as grief and indignation abated, fear
began to take their places. At first,
his fathers menacing words Law by in
some safe drawer of memory, bidinQ
their hour. At first John was ali
thwarted affection and blighted hope;
next bludgeoned vanity raised it's
head again, with twenty mortal CASH
es; and the father was disowned even
as he had disowned his son. What
was this regular course of life that
John should have admired it? what
were these clockwork virtues, from
which love was absent? Kindness
was the test; kindness the aim and
soul; and judged by such standard,
the discarded prodigal-now rapidly
drowning his sorrows and his reason
in successive drams-was a creature
OF lovelier morality than his self
righteous father. Yes, he was the
better man; he felt it, glowed with
the consciousness, and entering a
public house at the corner Of Howard
place (whither he had somehow wan
dered) he pledged his own virtue in a
glass-perhaps the fourth since his
dismissal. OF that he knew nothing,
keeping no account of what he did or
where he went; and in the general
crashing hurry of his nerves, uncon-
scious of the approach of intoxication.
Indeed, it is a question whether he
were really growing intoxicated, or
whether at first the spirits did not
even sober him. For it was even as
he drained his last glass that his faith
er's ambiguous and menacing words
popping from their hiding place in
memory-startled him like a hand
laid upon his shoulder. Grimes,
hunted, the gallows." They were
ugly words; in the ears of an innocent
man, perhaps all the uglier; for If
some judicial error were in act against
him, who should set a limit to its
grossness or TO how far ii might be
pushed? Not John, indeed; he was
no believer in the power of innocence,
his cursed experience pointing in
quite other ways; and his fears, once
wakened, grew with every hour and |
hunted him about the city streets.
1t was, perhaps, nearly nine at |
night; he had eaten nothing since
lunch, he had drunk good deal and
he was exhausted by emotion, when
the thought of Houston came into his
head. He turned, not merely to the
man as friend but to his house as a
place of refuge. The danger that
threatened him was still so vague
that he knew neither what So fear nor
where he might expect it; but this
much at least seemed undeniable.
that a private house was safer than a
public inn. Moved by these counsels
he turned at once to the Caledonian
station, passed (not without alarm)
INTO the bright lights of the approach,
redeemed his portmanteau from the
cloak room, and was soon whirling
n cab along the Glasgow road. The
,hange of movement and position, the
'ight Of the lamps twinkling in the
ear, aid the smell of damp and
mould and rotten straw which ,slung
Ibout the vehicle, wrought in him
TRANCE alterations of lucidity IND
Mortal giddiness.
al have been drinking" he discov- {
red; IL must go straight to bed and
leep." And he thanked heaven for
he drowsiness which came upon him
n waves. {
FRO BE Continued