Pausing at the door, he listened.
“The coast is clear,” he whispered; after which he stepped briskly out to the front door.
Just as he was passing through that door the girl came from another room and saw his vanishing back. She clutched at the widow, who had followed her.
“That man?” she cried, in a trembling, frightened voice. “Who is he?”
“He ga’ his name as Henri Clairvaux, o’ Paris,” answered the Widow Myles.
“And lied!” panted the girl. After which she fled up the stairs to the room of her brother, her face ashen pale.
[CHAPTER IV.—BUDTHORNE’S STRUGGLE.]
The working of alcohol on some constitutions is remarkable. It is a singular thing that some men seem to keep themselves steeped in the poison for years without breaking down, while others rapidly go to pieces and become physical wrecks before its vitality-destroying influence. The latter class is by far the larger.
Occasionally a man whose nerves are deep set, whose constitution is ironlike and whose coarser nature predominates, persists in drinking regularly and heavily for years and seems to remain in good health. To those who know him well, and meet him day after day, he presents no abnormal aspect; but almost certain it is that drink has taken such a hold on him that he cannot appear to be in his natural condition unless he constantly keeps in his stomach enough of the stuff to intoxicate an occasional drinker to the point of reeling. Take it away from him and he collapses like a pricked bladder.
Dunbar Budthorne was a man without the stamina to withstand the blighting effect of constant drinking. The rapidity with which the stuff fastened its clutch upon him was appalling. His relapse when, at the entreaty of his loving and faithful sister, he stopped drinking and let it wholly alone, was pitiful.