“That’s right, Jim!  Huzza for liberty!” shouted his companions.

“Yes, huzza for liberty! say I,” responded Braddock, in the effort to rally himself, and shake off the thoughts and feelings that.  Malcom’s narrative had conjured up a narrative that proved to be too true a history of his own downfall.

“It was a shame for you to do what you did down at Harry Arnold’s,” Braddock said to the Washingtonian about half an hour afterwards, meeting him on the street.

“Do what, Jim!”

“Why, rake up all my past history as you did, and insult Harry in his own house into the bargain.”

“How did I insult Harry Arnold?”

“By telling about that confounded whiskey-barrel that I have wished a hundred times had been in the bottom of the sea, before it ever fell into my hands.”

“I told the truth, didn’t I?”

“O yes—­it was all true enough, and a great deal too true.”

“He owed you a bill?”

“Yes.”

“And you wanted your money?”

“Yes.”

“But Harry wouldn’t pay you in anything but whiskey?”

“No, he would not.”

“And so you took a barrel of whiskey, that you did not want, in payment?”

“I did.”

“But would much rather have had the money?”

“Of course, I would.”

“And yet, you are so exceedingly tender of Harry Arnold’s feelings, notwithstanding his agency in your ruin, that you would not have him reminded of his original baseness—­or rather his dishonesty in not paying you in money, according to your understanding with him, for your work?”

“I don’t see any use in raking up these old things.”

“The use is, to enable you to see your folly so clearly as to cause you to abandon it.  I am sure you not only see it now, but feel it strongly.”

“Well, suppose I do?—­what then?”

“Why, sign the pledge, and become a sober man.”

“I’ve made up my mind never to sign a pledge,” was the emphatic answer.

“Why?”

“Because, I am determined to live and die a free man.  I’ll never sign away my liberty.  My father was a free man before me, and I will live and die a free man!”

“But you’re a slave now.”

“It is not true!  I am free.—­Free to drink, or free to et it alone, as I choose.”

“You are mistaken, Jim.  You have sold yourself into slavery, and the marks of the chains that still bind you, are upon your body.  You are the slave of a vile passion that is too strong for your reason.”

“I deny it.  I can quit drinking if I choose.”

“Then why don’t you quit?”

“Because I love to drink.”

“And love to see your wife’s cheek growing paler and paler every day—­and your children ragged and neglected?”

“Malcom!”

“I only asked the question, Jim.”

“But you know that I don’t love to see them in the condition they are.”