At length the noise subsided, and the group was ceasing to attract attention when, toward the end of the evening, the upper table, drooping under the lengthy elucubrations of the minister and the President of the Temperance Society, called on the orator of the day for a few remarks.  There was an interval of scuffling and laughter beneath the stairs, and then the minister’s lifted hand enjoined silence and Elmer Moffatt got to his feet.

“Step out where the ladies can hear you better, Mr. Moffatt!” the minister called.  Moffatt did so, steadying himself against the table and twisting his head about as if his collar had grown too tight.  But if his bearing was vacillating his smile was unabashed, and there was no lack of confidence in the glance he threw at Undine Spragg as he began:  “Ladies and Gentlemen, if there’s one thing I like better than another about getting drunk—­and I like most everything about it except the next morning—­it’s the opportunity you’ve given me of doing it right here, in the presence of this Society, which, as I gather from its literature, knows more about the subject than anybody else.  Ladies and Gentlemen”—­he straightened himself, and the table-cloth slid toward him—­“ever since you honoured me with an invitation to address you from the temperance platform I’ve been assiduously studying that literature; and I’ve gathered from your own evidence—­what I’d strongly suspected before—­that all your converted drunkards had a hell of a good time before you got at ’em, and that... and that a good many of ’em have gone on having it since...”

At this point he broke off, swept the audience with his confident smile, and then, collapsing, tried to sit down on a chair that didn’t happen to be there, and disappeared among his agitated supporters.

There was a night-mare moment during which Undine, through the doorway, saw Ben Frusk and the others close about the fallen orator to the crash of crockery and tumbling chairs; then some one jumped up and shut the parlour door, and a long-necked Sunday school teacher, who had been nervously waiting his chance, and had almost given it up, rose from his feet and recited High Tide at Gettysburg amid hysterical applause.

The scandal was considerable, but Moffatt, though he vanished from the social horizon, managed to keep his place in the power-house till he went off for a week and turned up again without being able to give a satisfactory reason for his absence.  After that he drifted from one job to another, now extolled for his “smartness” and business capacity, now dismissed in disgrace as an irresponsible loafer.  His head was always full of immense nebulous schemes for the enlargement and development of any business he happened to be employed in.  Sometimes his suggestions interested his employers, but proved unpractical and inapplicable; sometimes he wore out their patience or was thought to be a dangerous dreamer.  Whenever he found there was no hope of his ideas being adopted