But one day I noticed that a coolness had arisen between her and Ned; a scarce evident repulsion on her part, a cessation of interest on his.  This was, I must confess, as greatly to my satisfaction as to my curiosity.  But Fanny was no more a talebearer than if she had been of our sex; and Ned was little like to disclose the cause intentionally:  so I did not learn it until by inference from a passage that occurred one night at the King’s Arms’ Tavern.

Poor Philip, avoided and ignored by Madge, who had not yet relented, was taking an evening stroll with me, in the soothing company of the pedagogue; when we were hailed by Ned with an invitation to a mug of ale in the tavern.  Struck with the man’s apparent wistfulness for company, and moved by a fellow feeling of forlornness, Philip accepted; and Cornelius, always acquiescent, had not the ill grace to refuse.  So the four of us sat down together at a table.

“I wish I might offer you madeira, gentlemen; or punch, at least,” said Ned regretfully, “but you know how it is.  I’m reaping what I sowed.  Things might be worse.  I knew ’em worse in London—­before I turned over a new leaf.”

The mugs being emptied, and the rest of us playing host in turn, they were several times replenished.  Ned had been drinking before he met us; but this was not apparent until he began to show the effect of his potations while the heads of us his companions were still perfectly clear.  It was evident that he had not allowed his conversion to wean him from this kind of indulgence.  The conversation reverted to his time of destitution in London.

“Such experiences,” observed Cornelius, “have their good fruits.  They incline men to repentance who might else continue in their evil ways all their lives.”

“Yes, sir; that’s the truth!” cried Ned.  “If I’d had some people’s luck—­but it’s better to be saved than to make a fortune—­although, to be sure, there are fellows, rascals, too, that the Lord seems to take far better care of than he does of his own!”

Mr. Cornelius looked a little startled at this.  But the truth was, I make no doubt, that the pretence of virtue, adopted for the purpose of regaining the comforts of his father’s house, wore heavily upon Ned; that he chafed terribly under it sometimes; and that this was one of the hours when, his wits and tongue loosened by drink, he became reckless and allowed himself relief.  He knew that Philip, Cornelius, and I, never tattled.  And so he cast the muzzle of sham reformation from his mouth.

He was silent for a while, recollections of past experience rising vividly in his mind, as they will when a man comes to a certain stage of drink.