“That will do, my woman.”  Then he turned to David, and putting one bottle on the table said, “There is your foe!  Face your enemy, sir!  Sit down before him morning, noon, and night.  Dare him to master you!  Put this bottle on the table in your ain room; carry this in your hand to your office, and stand it before your eyes upon your desk.  If you want a foe to face and to conquer, a foe that you can see and touch, here is one mighty enough to stir the bravest soul.  And, if you turn your back on him you are a coward; a mean, poor-hearted coward, sir.  And there ne’er was a coward yet, o’ the Callendar blood, nor o’ the Campbell line!  Your Captain is nane less than the Son o’ God.  Hear what he says to you!  ‘To him that overcometh!  To him that overcometh!’ O Davie, you ken the rest!” and the old man was so lifted out of and above himself, that his face shone and his keen gray eyes scintillated with a light that no market-place ever saw in them.

David caught the holy enthusiasm; he seized the idea like a visible hand of God for his help.  The black bottle became to him the materialization of all his crime and misery.  It was a foe he could see, and touch, and defy.  It seemed to mock him, to tempt him, to beg him just to open the cork, if only to test the strength of his resolutions.

Thank God he never did it.  He faced his enemy the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.  He kept him in sight through the temptations of a business day.  He faced him most steadily in the solitude of his own room.  There, indeed, his most dangerous struggles took place, and one night John heard him after two hours of restless hurried walking up and down, throw open his window, and dash the bottle upon the pavement beneath it.  That was the last of his hard struggles; the bottle which replaced the one flung beyond his reach stands to-day where it has stood for nearly a quarter of a century, and David feels now no more inclination to open it than if it contained strychnine.

This is no fancy story.  It is a fact.  It is the true history of a soul’s struggle, and I write it—­God knows I do—­in the strong hope that some brave fellow, who is mastered by a foe that steals upon him in the guise of good fellowship, or pleasure, or hospitality, may locate his enemy, and then face and conquer him in the name of Him who delivers his people from their sins.  I do not say that all natures could do this.  Some may find safety and final victory in flight, or in hiding from their foe; but I believe that the majority of souls would rise to a warfare in which the enemy was confronting them to face and fight, and would conquer.

I have little more to say of David Callendar.  It was the story of his fall and his redemption I intended to write.  But we cannot separate our spiritual and mortal life; they are the warp and woof which we weave together for eternity.  Therefore David’s struggle, though a palpable one in some respects, was, after all, an intensely spiritual one; for it was in the constant recognition of Christ as the Captain of his salvation, and in the constant use of such spiritual aids as his Bible and his minister gave him, that he was enabled to fight a good fight and to come off more than conqueror in a contest wherein so many strive and fail.