They passed, on their way homeward, a house in the street, in front of which was suspended a large sign-board, gaily painted. Henry looked up at the sign, and his mother looked up too, and sighed deeply. It was the sign of the Eight Bells.
There were sounds of laughter and music within, as they hurried by its open door, and Henry wondered what his mother had meant last evening when she said, "If it had not been for the Eight Bells, this might never have happened!" What had the Eight Bells to do with the poor lady's fearful death?
That evening Henry's father called him to his side, and pointing to a passage in the Bible which lay open before him, he said, "Read, my son."
And Henry read, "'Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.'"
Henry's father then guided his son's eye to another passage on the same page, and the boy read, "'Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way. Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty:—'"
Henry's father then turned over the pages of the Bible till he came to a part of the New Testament; and once more, he pointed to a verse.
And Henry went on reading, "'Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God.'"
The father took the child on his knee, and said, "The man whom you saw to-day in that sorrowful house is a drunkard. By this he has brought himself to poverty and shame, and the poor unhappy mother to death; and except God should bring him to repentance, he cannot, when he dies, inherit the kingdom of God; for God's Word says so. There is no room for drunkards in heaven. Let us pray that God will forgive that unhappy man; and that you, my dear boy, may always be kept, by God's grace, from being a drunkard."
Henry heard in after years the history of that miserable man; how he had sunk from a favourable position in society by becoming a sot; had become a daily visitor at the Eight Bells, first at evening, and then in broad daylight also; had forfeited a lucrative situation; had sold his furniture and his garments, and, at length, even his wife's and children's, to satisfy his appetites, till, driven to insanity by ill-usage and destitution and despair, the poor lady had committed self-destruction.
This was the first voice of the Eight Bells; and Henry never forgot its awful warning tone.