“But, Mr. Mildman—­”

The two men had paused nearly in front of Mr. Muddler’s splendid establishment, and were standing there when the tavern-keeper commenced a reply to the minister’s last remarks.  He had uttered but the first word or two, when he was interrupted by a pale, thinly-dressed female, who held a little girl by the hand.  She came up before him and looked him steadily in the face for a moment or two.

“Mr. Muddler, I believe,” she said.

“Yes, madam, that is my name,” was his reply.

“I have come, Mr. Muddler,” the woman then said, with an effort to smile and affect a polite air, “to thank you for a present I received last night.”

“Thank me, madam!  There certainly must be some mistake.  I never made you a present.  Indeed, I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

“You said your name was Muddler, I believe?”

“Yes, madam, as I told you before, that is my name.”

“Then you are the man.  You made my little girl, here a present also, and we have both come with our thanks.”

“You deal in riddles, madam, Speak out plainly.”

“As I said before,” the woman replied, with bitter irony in her tones, “I have come with my little girl to thank you for the present we received last night;—­a present of wretchedness and abuse.”

“I am still as far from understanding you as ever,” the tavern-keeper said—­I never abused you, madam.  I do not even know you.”

“But you know my husband, sir!  You have enticed him to your bar, and for his money have given him a poison that has changed him from one of the best and kindest of men, into a demon.  To you, then, I owe all the wretchedness I have suffered, and the brutal treatment I shared with my helpless children last night.  It is for this that I have come to thank you.”

“Surely, madam, you must be beside yourself.  I have nothing to do with your husband.”

“Nothing to do with him!” the woman exclaimed, in an excited tone.  “Would to heaven that it were so!  Before you opened your accursed gin palace, he was a sober man, and the best and kindest of husbands—­but, enticed by you, your advertisement and display of fancy drinks, he was tempted within the charmed circle of your bar-room.  From that moment began his downfall; and now he is lost to self-control—­lost to feeling—­lost to humanity!”

As the woman said this, she burst into tears, and then turned and walked slowly away.

“To that painful illustration of the truth of what I have said,” the minister remarked, as the two stood once more alone, “I have nothing to add.  May the lesson sink deep into your heart.  Between you and that woman’s husband existed a regular business transaction.  Did it result in a mutual benefit?  Answer that question to your own conscience.”

How the tavern-keeper answered it, we know not.  But if he received no benefit from the double lesson, we trust that others may; and in the hope that the practical truth we have endeavoured briefly to illustrate, will fall somewhere upon good ground, we cast it forth for the benefit of our fellow-men.