“Clear enough.  Yesterday morning, seeing what a poor miserable wretch I had got to be, and how much my wife and children were suffering, I swore of from ever touching another drop.  I wouldn’t sign a pledge, though, because that, I thought, would be giving up my freedom.  In coming here, I got past Harry Arnold’s grog-shop pretty well, but when you came out so pleasantly at eleven o’clock, and asked me to go over to the house and take a drink, I couldn’t refuse for the life of me—­especially as I felt as dry as a bone.  So I drank pretty freely, as you’ know, and went home, in consequence, drunk at night, notwithstanding I had promised Sally, solemnly, in the morning, never to touch another drop again as long as I lived.  Poor soul!  Bad enough, and discouraged enough, she felt last night, I know.

“So you see—­when I got up this morning, I felt half-determined to sign the pledge, at all hazards.  Still I didn’t want to give up my liberty, and was arguing the points over again, when Sally took me right aback so strongly that I gave up, wrote a pledge, signed it, and nailed it up over the mantelpiece, where it has got to stay.”

“I am most heartily glad to hear of your good resolution,” Mr. Jones said, grasping warmly the hand of Braddock—­“and heartily ashamed of myself for having tempted you, yesterday.  Hereafter, I am resolved not to offer liquor to any man who works for me.  If my money is not enough for him, he must go somewhere else.  Well,” he continued—­“you have signed away your liberty, as you called it.  Do you feel any more a slave than you did yesterday?”

“A slave?  No, indeed!  I’m a free man now!  Yesterday I was such a slave to a debased appetite, that all my good resolutions were like cobwebs.  Now I can act like an honest, rational man.  I am in a state of freedom.  You ask me to drink.  I say ’no’—­yesterday I could not say no, because I was not a free man.  But now I am free to choose what is right, and to reject what is wrong.  I don’t care for all the grog-shops and whiskey-bottles from here to sun-down!  I’m not afraid to go past Harry Arnold’s—­nor even to go in there and make a temperance speech, if necessary.  Hurrah for freedom!”

It cannot be supposed that Jim’s wife, after her many sad disappointments, could feel altogether assured that he would stand by his pledge, although she had more confidence in its power over him than in anything else, and believed that it was the only thing that would save him, if he could be saved at all.  She was far more cheerful, however, for her hope was stronger than it had ever been; and went about her house with a far lighter step than usual.

Towards evening, as the time began to approach for his return, she proceeded, as she had done on the day before, to make arrangements for his comfortable reception.  The little scene of preparation for supper, and dressing up the children, was all acted over again, and with a feeling of stronger confidence.  Still, her heart would beat at times oppressively, as a doubt would steal over her mind.