Mr. Birtwell sat down, passive now, his hand grasping the arms of his chair like one bracing himself for a shock.

“You remember General Abercrombie?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what has become of him?”

“No.  I heard something about his having been dismissed from the army.”

“Did you hear the cause?”

“It was drunkenness, I believe.”

“Yes, that was the cause.  He was a fine officer and a man of high character, but fell into habits of intemperance.  Seeing himself drifting to certain ruin, he made a vigorous effort to reform his life.  Experience told him that his only safety lay in complete abstinence, and this rule he adopted.  For many months he remained firm.  But he fell at your house.  The odor of wine that pervaded all the air and stirred within him the long-sleeping appetite, the freedom he saw around him, the invitations that met him from distinguished men and beautiful women, the pressure of a hundred influences upon his quickened desires, bore him down at last, and he fell.

“I heard the whole sad story to-day,” continued Mr. Elliott.  He did not even attempt to struggle up again, but abandoned himself to his fate.  Soon after, he was removed from the command of this department and sent off to the Western frontier, and finally court-martialed and dismissed from the army.

“To his wife, who was deeply attached to him, General Abercrombie was when sober one of the kindest and most devoted of husbands, but a crazy and cruel fiend when drunk.  It is said that on the night he went home from your house last winter strange noises and sudden cries of fear were heard in their room, and that Mrs. Abercrombie when seen next morning looked as if she had just come from a bed of sickness.  She accompanied him to the West, but I learned today that since his dismissal from the army his treatment of her has been so outrageous and cruel that she has had to leave him in fear of her life, and is now with her friends, a poor broken-hearted woman.  As for the general, no one seems to know what has become of him.”

“And the responsibility of all this you would lay at my door?” said Mr. Birtwell, in a husky voice, through which quivered a tone of anger.  “But I reject your view of the case entirely.  General Abercrombie fell because he had no strength of purpose and no control of his appetite.  He happened to trip at my house—­that is all.  He would have fallen sooner or later somewhere.”

“Happened to trip!  Yes, that is it, Mr. Birtwell; you use the right word.  He tripped at your house.  But who laid the stone of stumbling in his path?  Suppose there had been no wine, served to your guests, would he have stumbled on that fatal night?  If there had been no wine served, would Archie Voss have lost his way in the storm or perished in the icy waters?  No, my friend, no; and if there had been no wine served at your board that night, three human lives which have, alas! been hidden from us by death’s eclipse would be shedding light and warmth upon many hearts now sorrowful and desolate.  Three human lives, and a fourth just going out.  There is responsibility, and neither you nor I can escape it, Mr. Birtwell, if through indifference or design we permit ourselves to become the instruments of such dire calamities.”