the roar that suddenly rose in his mind.  In that moment he felt himself a wretched and most guilty man.  He felt that his cruel words had entered that humble home, to make desperate poverty more desperate, to sicken sickness, and to sadden sorrow.  Before him was the dram-shop, let and licensed to nourish the worst and most brutal appetites and instincts of human natures, at the sacrifice of all their highest and holiest tendencies.  The throng of tipplers and drunkards was swarming through its hopeless door, to gulp the fiery liquor whose fumes give all shames, vices, miseries, and crimes a lawless strength and life, and change the man into the pig or tiger.  Murder was done, or nearly done, within those walls last night.  Within those walls no good was ever done; but daily, unmitigated evil, whose results were reaching on to torture unborn generations.  He had consented to it all!  He could not falter, or equivocate, or evade, or excuse.  His dead friend’s words rang in his conscience like the trump of the judgment angel.  He was conquered.

Slowly, the resolve instantly to go in uprose within him, and with it a change came upon his spirit, and the natural world, sadder than before, but sweeter, seemed to come back to him.  A great feeling of relief flowed upon his mind.  Pale and trembling still, he crossed the street with a quick, unsteady step, entered a yard at the side of the house, and, brushing by a host of white, rattling spectres of frozen clothes, which dangled from lines in the enclosure, mounted some wooden steps, and rang the bell.  In a minute he heard footsteps within, and saw the gleam of a lamp.  His heart palpitated violently as he heard the lock turning, lest the answerer of his summons might be his tenant.  The door opened, and, to his relief, he stood before a rather decent-looking Irishman, bending forward in his stocking-feet, with one boot and a lamp in his hand.  The man stared at him from a wild head of tumbled red hair, with a half-smile round his loose open month, and said, “Begorra!” This was a second-floor tenant.

Dr. Renton was relieved at the sight of him; but he rather failed in an attempt at his rent-day suavity of manner, when he said,—­

“Good evening, Mr. Flanagan.  Do you think I can see Mrs. Miller to-night?”

“She’s up there, docther, anyway.”  Mr. Flanagan made a sudden start for the stairs, with the boot and lamp at arm’s length before him, and stopped as suddenly.  “Yull go up? or wud she come down to ye?” There was as much anxious indecision in Mr. Flanagan’s general aspect, pending the reply, as if he had to answer the question himself.

“I’ll go up, Mr. Flanagan,” returned Dr. Renton, stepping in, after a pause, and shutting the door.  “But I’m afraid she’s in bed.”