And with, this last sentence on his lips, Ellis left his store, and walked with hurried steps homeward.  Entering his house, he stood for a moment or two in one of the parlour doors.  A single glance sufficed.  Alas! it was but too true.

“Mad woman!” he exclaimed, in a low, bitter tone.  “Mad woman!  You have driven me over the precipice!”

Turning quickly away, he left the house—­to return to his store?—­Alas! no.  With him the struggle was over.  The manly spirit, that had, for nearly two weeks, battled so bravely with difficulty without and temptation within, yielded under this last assault.  In less than an hour, all sense of pain was lost in the stupor of inebriation!

CHAPTER XX.

We will not trace, minutely, the particulars attendant on the headlong downward course of Henry Ellis.  The causes leading thereto have been fully set forth, and we need not refer back to them.  Enough, that the fall was complete.  The wretched man appeared to lose all strength of mind, all hope in life, all self-respect.  Not even a feeble effort was opposed to the down-rushing torrent of disaster that swept away every vestige of his business.  For more than a week he kept himself so stupefied with brandy, that neither friends nor creditors could get from him any intelligible statement in regard to his affairs.  In the wish of the latter for an assignment, he passively acquiesced, and permitted all his effects to be taken from his hands.  And so he was thrown upon the world, with his family, helpless, penniless, crushed in spirit, and weak as a child in the strong grasp of an over-mastering appetite, which had long been gathering strength for his day of weakness.

Over the sad history of the succeeding five years let us draw a veil.  We have no heart to picture its suffering, its desolation, its hopelessness.  If, in the beginning, there was too much pride in the heart of Mrs. Ellis, all was crushed out under the iron heel of grim adversity.  If she had once thought too much of herself, and too little of her husband, a great change succeeded; for she clung to him in all the cruel and disgusting forms his abandonment assumed, and, with a self-sacrificing devotion, struggled with the fearful odds against her to retain for her husband and children some little warmth in the humble home where they were hidden from the world in which they once moved.

From the drunkard, angels withdraw themselves, and evil spirits come into nearer companionship; hence, the bestiality and cruelty of drunkenness.  The man, changing his internal associates, receives by inflex a new order of influence, and passively acts therefrom.  He becomes, for the time, the human agent by which evil spirits effect their wicked purposes; and it usually happens that those who are nearest allied to him, and who have the first claims on him for support, protection, and love, are they who feel