“They’re under the bed,” replied the sufferer, glancing fearfully around.  “Yes, yes!  There!  I see that blackest devil with the snake in his hand.  He’s grinning at me from behind the bed post.  Now he’s going to throw his horrible snake at me!  There! oh-oh-oh-oh!”

The fearful, despairing scream that issued from the poor creature’s lips, as he clung to his wife, curdled the very blood in the veins of Mr. Grim, who now comprehended the meaning of the scene.  Dyer and his wife were friends of other days.  With the latter he had grown up from childhood, and there were many reasons why he felt an interest in her.  Her husband had learned drinking and idleness in his bar-room, many years before; and more than once during the time of his declension, had she called upon Mr. Grim, and earnestly besought him to do something to save the one she loved best on earth from impending ruin.  But, he had entered the downward way, and it seemed that nothing could stop his rapid progress.  Now he met him, after the lapse of ten years, and found him mad with the drunkard’s madness.

The scene was too painful for Mr. Grim.  He could not bear it.  So, hurriedly drawing his purse from his pocket, he threw it upon the floor, and turning from the room made his way out of the house, trembling in every nerve.  When he arrived at home, the perspiration stood cold and clammy on every part of his body.  His mind was greatly excited.  Most vividly did he picture, in imagination, the horrible fiend, striking the poor drunken wretch with his serpent spear, or blasting him with his terrific countenance.  For an hour he walked the floor of his chamber, and then, exhausted in body and mind, threw himself on a bed, and tried to find oblivion in sleep.  But, though he wooed the gentle goddess, she came not with her soothing poppies.  Too vivid was the impression of what he had seen, and too painful were the accompanying reflections, to admit of sweet repose.  At last, however, exhaustion came, and he fell into that half sleeping and waking state—­in which the imagination remains active, so painful to endure.  In this state, one picture presented by imagination was most vivid of all; it was the picture of poor Dyer, shrinking from the fiend with the serpent, which latter was now as plainly visible to him as it had been to the unhappy drunkard.  Presently the fiend began to turn his eyes upon him with a malignant expression; then it glanced from him to the drunkard, and pointing at the latter, said Grim heard the voice distinctly—­

“It is your work!”

The distiller closed his eyes to hide from view the grinning phantom.  But it did not shut out the vision.  The fiend was before him still; and now it swung around its head a horrid serpent with distended jaws, and seemed about to dash it upon him.  He cowered and groaned in fear.  As he still gazed upon the dreadful form, it slowly changed into a female of stern yet beautiful aspect.  In one hand she held a naked sword, and in the other a balance.  Her knew her, and trembled still more intensely.