“I shall only walk a little way, Mary,” he replied, as he opened the door and went out.

Neither the mother nor sister could utter the fear that each felt, lest Alfred should meet with and fall in temptation before he returned.  This fear grew stronger and stronger, as the minutes began to accumulate, and lengthen to an hour.  A period of ten or fifteen minutes was as long as they had any idea of his remaining away.  Where could he be?  Had he been taken sick; or was he again yielding to the seductions of a depraved and degrading appetite?  The suspense became agonizing to their hearts, as not only one, but two, and even three hours passed, bringing the dim twilight, and yet he returned not.

In the meantime, the young man, whose appearance the careful hand of Mary and her sister had been rendered far superior to what it had been for years past, went out from his mother’s humble dwelling, and took his way slowly down one of the streets, leading to the main portion of the city, with many thoughts of a painful character passing through his mind.  The few weeks that he had been confined to the house, and in constant association with his mother, and one or both of his sisters, who were at home, had startled his mind into reflection.  He could not but contrast their constant and affectionate devotion to him, with his own shameful and criminal neglect of them.  Conceal her real feelings as she would, it did not escape his notice, that when Anna came home at night, she was so much exhausted as to be hardly able to sit up; and as for Mary, often when she dreamed not that he was observing her, had he noticed her air of languor and exhaustion, and her half-stifled expression of pain,—­as she bent resolutely over her needle-work.  Never before had he felt so indignant towards Ellen’s husband for his neglect and abuse of her, his once favourite sister; and, indeed, the favourite of the whole family.

It was, to his own mind, a mystery how he ever could have sunk so low, and become so utterly regardless of his mother and sisters.

“Wretch! wretch! miserable wretch that I am!” he would, sometimes, mentally exclaim, turning his face to the wall as he lay reviewing, involuntarily, his past life.  Uniformly it happened, that following such a crisis in his feelings, would be some affectionate word or kind attention from Mary or his mother, smiting upon his heart with emotions of the keenest remorse.

It was under the influence of such feelings that he went out on the afternoon just alluded to.  Still, no settled plan of reformation had been formed in his mind, for the discouraging question would constantly arise while pondering gloomily over his condition and the condition of the family.

“What can I do?” To this, he could find no satisfactory answer.  Three or four years of debasing drunkenness, had utterly separated him from those who had it in their power to encourage and strengthen his good desires,—­and to put him in the way of providing for himself and his family, by an industrious application to some kind of business.