“Well, Art,” said Harte, “there’s one man you can’t blame for this, and that is Syl Harte.”

“No, Syl, never—­but now, boys, I am ready.”

“Frank Maguire’s health! hip, hip, hurra!”

Thus was a fine, generous-minded, and affectionate young man—­who possessed all the candor and absence of suspicion which characterize truth—­tempted and triumphed over, partly through the very warmth of his own affections, by a set of low, cunning profligates, who felt only anxious to drag him down from the moral superiority which they felt he possessed.  That he was vain, and fond of praise, they knew, and our readers may also perceive that it was that unfortunate vanity which gave them the first advantage over him, by bringing him, through its influence, among them.  Late that night he was carried home on a door, in a state of unconscious intoxication.

It is utterly beyond our power to describe the harrowing state of his sensations on awakening the next morning.  Abasement, repentance, remorse, all combined as they were within him, fall far short of what he felt; he was degraded in his own eyes, deprived of self-respect, and stripped of every claim to the confidence of his brother, as he was to the well-known character for integrity which had been until then inseparable from the name.  That, however, which pressed upon him with the most intense bitterness was the appalling reflection that he could no longer depend upon himself, nor put any trust in his own resolutions.  Of what use was he in the world without a will of his own, and the power of abiding by its decisions?  None; yet what was to be done?  He could not live out of the world, and wherever he went, its temptations would beset him.  Then there was his beloved Margaret Murray! was he to make her the wife of a common drunkard? or did she suspect, when she pledged herself to him, that she was giving away her heart and affections to a poor unmanly sot, who had not sense or firmness to keep himself sober?  He felt in a state between distraction and despair, and putting his hands over his face, he wept bitterly.  To complete the picture, his veins still throbbed with the dry fever that follows intoxication, his stomach was in a state of deadly sickness and loathing, and his head felt exactly as if it would burst or fly asunder.

Alas! had his natural character been properly understood and judiciously managed; had he been early taught to understand and to control his own obvious errors; had the necessity of self-reliance, firmness, and independence been taught him; had his principles not been enfeebled by the foolish praise of his family, nor his vanity inflated by their senseless appeals to it—­it is possible, nay, almost certain, that he would, even at this stage of his life, have been completely free from the failings which are beginning even now to undermine the whole strength of his moral constitution.

Frank’s interview with him on this occasion was short but significant—­