Then Melie and Bob came and said: "Oh, please do! We're so hungry and miser'ble all the time; and if you'll only give up the drink we'll be so good, and never want any beating."
George looked at Susan across the upturned faces of the children, and Susan looked back at him wistfully, earnestly.
"Susan," said George, in low, troubled tones; "if I promise now, can I ever keep my word? for I'm raging for a drop this minute."
Susan might have answered, "So am I," but, with a touch of returning womanliness, she hid her own suffering that she might minister to the need of the man who thus confessed his weakness.
"George," she answered steadily, "I had a praying mother once, and so had you. I once knew how to pray myself, and so did you; and if ever our mothers' prayers for us are going to be answered, it'll be now; and if ever we begin to pray for ourselves again, it'll be this very minute, or we shall be lost for ever!" And Susan fell on her knees, and passionately poured out her whole soul that forgiveness might be granted to herself and her erring husband, and that to their weakness and feebleness there might descend the almighty power and perpetual help of an Omnipotent Saviour.
Was that prayer answered? Could two souls so bound and tied by Satan's strongest fetters be loosed and set free, no longer slaves of a tyrant but children of a King? Let the new home in a new land, and the subdued brightness of their faces, and the happy abandonment of their children's glee answer, and say that once again the captives of the mighty have been taken away, and the prey of the terrible delivered.
In his own land, Timothy Morris hears, from time to time, of the well doing of his former neighbours; and rejoices that he has been the humble instrument of bringing light and succour to a household which had been darkened and degraded for years through the insidious advances of moderate drinking.
