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A few years passed away, and the boy heard a second voice, which seemed an echo of that which he had heard as a child.
It was on a bright summer's day, as Henry, returned from school, that he met a crowd in the street, slowly moving onward, while from open doors and windows gazed men and women as it passed. And one said to another, "This is what is got by going to the Eight Bells."
Henry looked on, and as the crowd partially opened, he saw a young man, pale, and agitated with fear or remorse, led on—and he staggered as he went—by other men whom he knew to be the peace officers of the town.
Henry felt a cold chill creep over him as he saw marks of blood on the garments of the prisoner, and was told that he had grievously and treacherously wounded a man in a fierce drunken quarrel at the Eight Bells.
Henry passed on; and the next day it was told that the wounded man was dead, and the manslayer was in prison. The tragical deed had been wrought under the excitement of intoxication. There was a trifling dispute; thence had arisen taunting words, then a blow was struck, and then a stab with a knife was returned. The wives and children of the slayer and the slain were plunged at once into the deepest woe. The men had, until the fatal quarrel, been close companions and friends.
The slain man was buried, and, a few weeks later, the manslayer had received sentence of transportation; and when Henry heard this, the words once more came into his mind which he had first read as a child: "'Look not upon the wine when it is red: at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.'"
And he prayed in his soul, "'Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.'"
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Other years passed away, and a third voice sounded in the ears of the youth, like those which he had heard as a boy and a child; it told of shame and guilt, and a prison's walls.