A light broke into Mr. Ridley’s face.

“You cannot be just and merciful if you touch the accursed thing, for that would destroy your power to be so.  To touch it, then, will be to sin against God and hurt your neighbor.  Just here, then, must your religious life be in.  For you to taste any kind of intoxicating drink would be a sin.  God cannot help you, unless you shun this evil as a sin against him, and he will give you the power to shun it if, whenever you feel the desire to drink, you resist that desire and pray for strength by which to gain a victory.

“Every time you do this you will receive new spiritual strength, and be so much nearer the ark of safety.  So resisting day by day, always in a humble acknowledgment that every good gift comes from a loving Father in heaven, the time is not far distant when your feet will be on the neck of the enemy that has ruled over you so long.  God, even our God, will surely bring you off conqueror.”

Mr. Ridley on whose calmer face the light of a new confidence now rested, drew his arm closely about Ethel, who was leaning against him, and said: 

“Take heart, darling.  If God is for us, who shall be against us?  Henceforth I will trust in him.”

Ethel put her arms about his neck, weeping silently.  The matron and lady manager went out and left them alone.

Mrs. Birtwell did not visit the Home on this morning to see how it fared with Mr. Ridley as she had intended doing.  The shadow of a great evil had fallen upon her house.  For some time she had seen its approaches and felt the gathering gloom.  If the reader will go back over the incidents and characters of this story, he will recall a scene between Mrs. Whitford and her son Ellis, the accepted lover of Blanche Birtwell, and will remember with what earnestness the mother sought to awaken in the mind of the young man a sense of danger, going so far as to uncover a family secret and warn him of a taint in his blood.  It will also be remembered how the proud, self-confident young man rejected, her warnings and entreaties, and how wine betrayed him.

The humiliation that followed was deep, but not effective to save him.  Wine to his inherited appetite was like blood to the wolf-nature.  To touch it was to quicken into life an irrepressible desire for more.  But his pride fought against any acknowledgment of his weakness, and particularly against so public an acknowledgment as abstinence when all around him were taking wine.  Every time he went to a dinner or evening-party, or to any entertainment where wine was to be served, he would go self-admonished to be on guard against excess, but rarely was the admonition heeded.  A single glass so weakened his power of restraint that he could not hold back his hand; and if it so happened that from any cause this limit was forced upon him, as in making a morning or an evening call, the stimulated appetite would surely draw his feet to the bar of some fashionable saloon or hotel in order that it might secure a deeper satisfaction.