“But what is the meaning of all this, Mr. Gray?  Where am I?  And how came I here?”

“Sit down, John, and be calm.  You are in my house.  Last night I took you from the gutter, too much intoxicated to help yourself.  You would have drowned there, in three inches of water, had not a friendly hand been near to save you.”

“Dreadful!” ejaculated the young man, striking his hand hard against his forehead, while an expression of shame and agonizing remorse passed over his face.

“It is, indeed, dreadful to think of, my young friend!” Mr. Gray remarked, in a sympathizing tone.  “How wretched you must be!”

“Wretched?  Alas! sit, you cannot imagine the horror of this dreadful moment.  Surely I have been mad for the past few days!  And enough has occurred to drive me mad.”

“So I should think, John.  But that is past now, and the future is still yours, and its bright page still unsullied by a single act of folly.”

“But the past!  The dreadful past!  That can never be recalled—­never be atoned for,” Barclay replied, his countenance bearing the strongest expression of anguish and remorse.  “To think of all I have lost To think how cruelly I have mocked the fondest hopes, and crushed the purest affections—­perhaps broken a loving heart by my folly.  O, sir!  It will drive me mad!”

As the young man said this, he arose to his feet, and commenced pacing the room to and fro with agitated steps.  Now striking his hands against his forehead, and now wringing them violently.

“Since that accursed hour,” he resumed, after a few minutes thus spent, “when I madly tempted myself, under the belief that I had gained the mastery over a depraved appetite by an abstinence from all kinds of liquor for six months, I have but a dim recollection of events.  I do, indeed, remember, with tolerable distinctness, that I went to claim the hand of Helen Weston, according to appointment.  But from the moment I entered the house, all is to me confusion, or a dead blank.  Tell me, then, Mr. Gray,”—­and the young man’s voice grew calmer,—­“the effect of my miserable conduct upon her whom I loved purely and tenderly.  Let me know all.  I ask no disguise.”

“The effect, John, has been painful, indeed.  Since that dreadful night, she has remained in a state of partial delirium.  But her physician told me, yesterday, that all of her symptoms had become more favourable.”

“And how is her father, and friends?”

“Deeply incensed, of course, at your conduct.”

“And my sister?  How is Alice?”

“She keeps up with an effort.  But oh, how wretched and broken-hearted she looks!  Is it not dreadful, John, to think, how, by a single act of folly, you have lacerated the hearts that loved you most, and imposed upon them burdens of anguish, almost too heavy to be borne?”

“It is dreadful! dreadful!  O, that I had died, before I became an accursed instrument of evil to those I love.  But what can I do, Mr. Gray, to atone, in some degree, for the misery I have wrought?”