The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-07-19
(Continued.)

rhinP terrible had happened, he dld not fully realize what had taKen place. His mouth was dry and marched. and his head throbbed ter ribly. He had vague remembrance of having acted strangely, but he could not riece together the scatter ed thoughts which f1oated through his brain.
 What Is it?" he asked. afer vain ly thinking. "Am I still asleep? Is it all a nightmare 2"
 He looked around the room, and saw the suns rays streaming through the windows. No, he was not asleep, he was in the bedroom of his hotel. But why was he there? Why was his heart so heavy? Why did his head throb so terribly?
 Slowly memory began to work; he remembered dimly the swaying crowds, the shouts of enthusiastic supporters. But it was all very vague, and it seemed a long way off. His tongue was dry and parched, it would hardly move in his mouth. He felt an all-devouring thirst.
 whisky" he said, 'T must have whisky
 He moved to get out of bed; but as he did so, all the events of the past three days came to him as if in 2 flood. The wedding-day, the scorn of Olive Castlemaine. the black ter TOT of hopeless darkness, the return to whisky, the dissolution of Parlia- ment, the telegram summoning him to his constituency.
 It all came to him with such a shock that for a moment his thirst left him. The scenes of the previous aevening filled him with horror. Yes, he had been drinking hard all day, and the whisky had proved too much for him. He had walked to the Pub lie Hall all right; but the hot, fetid Atmosphere, the sight of Olive Cas- tIemaine's face thrown on the can vas had completely overmastered him. Had he not given up drinking whisky it would have been all right He would have made his speech, and no one would have suspected that he had been drinking; but as it was he had become maudlin fool, he had fallen down in drunken helplessness.
 The thought stung him to madness. This, then, was his boasted strength; this was what Radford Leicester had come to. The warnings of the pious come true. Whisky had made him as drunk as navy who had spent his weekend in debauchery on re- ceiving his weeks wage Cynic as hours, he had also been always a proud man. He had professed con- tempt for the men who had not been sble to conque the vices which dis graced them in th> eyes of the world. This pride 1s>u ols1Ossed him from the vulgar indulgence in sin, before he had met Olive Castlemaine. He had always acted and spoken as a gen.
 
 enough whisky to make other men hopelessly incapable. However de- hauched he might have been by the Ina bit which chained him, he had a1- ways dressed with scrupulous care, and he had never associated with those whom he regarded as low and debased.
 But now all had come to an end. Directly after his dismissal by Olive Castlemaine he had cast all good resolutions to the winds, and as a consequence he was at that moment a laughing-stock to the town, tomor- row he would be an object of ridi- cule for the whole country. And Olive Castlemaine would know of it. Bridget Osborne would send the local newspaper to her, and she would
 What a thin veneer his so-called reformation was, and what a broken reed he was, in spite of all his boast ed strength. He had been a poor thing whose moral elevation had de- pended on the smile of a woman, and when that smile was withdrawn, he had returned like swine to it's wallow
 But worse than all, there was the disgrace of it. Never before had he sacrificed his pride never before had he given any one the opportunity of saying that he did not retain full possession of his faculties. He had boasted that he had nerves of steel, and that no whisky ever distilled could make him drunk.
 He leaped out of bed, and with trembling hands opened his portman- teau. An, there it was-a bottle of whisky. He pulled out the cork, and then hesitated. Was he so weak, then, as to return to the poison that had made him the byword of clod- hoppers? The thought staggered him, and possibly he might have put it from him, had not the smell of the whisky reached him. This was like a match to @ powder magazine. He took a deep drink, and he felt better.
 "If I had only been careful it would never have happened" he reflected. sJ wonder now ff-"