THE END OF THE INEBRIATE.
Very soon after the events had taken place which have been described in our last chapter, Peace, much to his astonishment, had a rencontre with a person who was perhaps the very last in the world he would have expected to meet.
Our hero had to take some work home to a customer who resided at about a mile-and-a-half’s distance from his workshop. One fine bright sunshiny afternoon he bent his steps in the direction of the habitation in question.
As he was proceeding along a bye road he discovered in the distance a miserably-clad, cadaverous-looking man, whose features he remembered to have seen before, although they were, to say the truth, strangely and sadly altered.
At first he was in some doubt as to the identity of the traveller, but as he approached nearer he was surprised in no small degree to find that the miserable-looking man was none other than John Bristow, whom the reader will remember as Peace’s fellow-lodger in the town of Bradford.
Peace was fairly taken back when he recognised Bristow; he would if it had been possible have avoided a meeting, but as this could not very well be compassed, he determined to put the best face on the matter.
What could have brought Bristow to this part of the country was his first thought?
“Was he in search of anybody? Had he any communication to make?”
These were questions he could not answer satisfactorily.
Bristow was in a most miserable plight; his clothes were ragged and torn, and hung upon his attenuated frame like those of a scarecrow; he looked the very personification of squalid misery. Peace never remembered to have seen such a sudden alteration in anyone.