“‘Indeed!’

“’It’s a fact.  Come, won’t you go down and try a glass?  It’s delightful.’

“‘Are you in earnest about it?’

“’Certainly I am.  It’s one of the most delicious drinks that has been got up this season.’

“‘I don’t like to be seen going into such a place.’

“’O, as to that, there is a fine back entrance leading in from another street, that no one suspects, and a private bar into the bargain.  We can go in and get a drink, and nobody will ever see us.’

“‘Well, I don’t care if I do,’ said the temperance man, ’for I am very dry.’

“‘You’re a gone gozzling, my old chap,’ I said, as I saw him moving off.  ‘I thought I’d get you before long.’  Sure enough, the moment he took the first draught his doom was sealed.  His former desire for liquor came back on him with irresistible power; and before nightfall, he was so drunk that he went staggering along the street, to the chagrin and consternation of the teetotallers; but to the infinite delight of your humble servant.

“And so saying, that malignant fiend, who, while he inhabited a material body, was called old Billy Adams, stepped down from the still.  Then there arose three loud and long cheers, for Graves, and his ‘Sub-Treasury,’ that echoed and re-echoed wildly through that gloomy prison-house.

“You’re much thought of down there, you see,” continued Riley, with a cold grin of irony.—­“Adams says, that if this temperance movement aint stopped soon, they will have to get you among them, and make you head devil in that department.  How would you like that, old chap, say?  How would you like to go now?”

As Riley said this, he threw himself forward, and clasped his thin, bony fingers around the neck of the rum-seller, with a strong grip.

“How would you like to go now, ha?” he screamed fiercely in his ear, clenching his hand tighter and still tighter, while his hot breath melted over the face of Graves in a suffocating vapour.  The struggles of the rum-seller were vigorous and terrible—­but the dying man held on with a superhuman strength.  Soon everything around grew confused, and though still distinctly conscious, it was a consciousness in the mind of the tavern-keeper of the agonies of death.  This became so terrible to him that he resolved on one last and more vigorous effort for life.  It was made, and the hands of the dying man broke loose.  Instantly starting to his feet, the wretched dealer in poison for both the bodies and souls of men, found himself standing in the centre of his own parlour, with the sweat rolling from his face in large drops.

“Merciful Heaven!  And is it indeed a dream?” he ejaculated, panting with terror and exhaustion.

“A dream—­and yet not all a dream,” he added, in a few moments, in a sad, low tone.—­“In league with hell against my fellow-men!  Can it indeed be true?  But away! away such thoughts!”

Such thoughts, however, could not be driven away.  They crowded upon his mind at every avenue, and pressed inward to the exclusion of every other idea.