“Phwat’s in thim rivers ye’re spoutin’ about?” asked one.

“Vater, ov course.”

“Me wooden-shoed fri’nd, ye mane beer—­beer.”

“You insolt me, you red-headed——­”

“Was that Dutchman addressin’ of me?” demanded the half-drunken Irishman, trying to push by his friends.

“It’d be a foiner river if it wasn’t yaller,” said a peacemaker, holding his comrade.

In the slight scuffle which ensued one of the men unintentionally jostled the German.  His pipe fell to the ground.  He bent to recover it.

Through Colonel Pepper’s whole being shot the lightning of his strange impulse, a tingling tremor ran over him; a thousand giants lifted and swung his arm.  He fought to check it, but in vain.  With his blood bursting, with his strength expending itself in one irresistible effort, with his soul expanding in fiendish, unholy glee he brought his powerful hand down upon the bending German.

There was a great shout of laughter.

The German fell forward at length and knocked a man off the levee wall.  Then the laughter changed to excited shouts.

The wall was steep but not perfectly perpendicular.  Several men made frantic grabs at the sliding figure; they failed, however, to catch it.  Then the man turned over and rolled into the river with a great splash.  Cries of horror followed his disappearance in the muddy water, and when, an instant later, his head bobbed up yells filled the air.

No one had time to help him.  He tried ineffectually to reach the levee; then the current whirled him away.  The crowd caught a glimpse of a white despairing face, which rose on the crest of a muddy wave, and then was lost.

In the excitement of the moment the Colonel hurried from the spot.  Horror possessed him; he felt no less than a murderer.  Again he walked and walked.  Retribution had overtaken him.  The accursed habit that had disgraced him for twenty years had wrought its punishment.  Plunged into despair he plodded along the streets, till at length, out of his stupefaction, came the question—­what would Amanda say?

With that an overwhelming truth awakened him.  He was free.  He might have killed a man, but he certainly had killed his habit.  He felt the thing dead within him.  Wildly he gazed around to see where he was, and thought it a deed of fate that he had unconsciously traveled toward the home of his love.  For there before his eyes was Amanda’s cottage with the red geranium in her window.  He ran to the window and tapped mysteriously and peered within.  Then he ran to the door and knocked.  It opened with a vigorous swing.

“Mr. Pepper, what do you mean—­tapping on my window in such clandestine manner, and in broad daylight, too?” demanded Miss Hill with a stern voice none of her scholars had ever heard.

“Amanda, dear, I am a murderer!” cried Pepper, in tones of unmistakable joy.  “I am a murderer, but I’ll never do it again.”