"If I could furnish such an instrument honorably, I would do it."
"Hm! I tell you, Sam Yates, this sort of thing won't do."
Then Mr. Belcher left the room, and soon returned with a glass and a bottle of brandy. Setting them upon the table, he took the key from the outside of the door, inserted it upon the inside, turned it, and then withdrew it, and put it in his pocket. Yates rose and watched him, his face pale, and his heart thumping at his side like a tilt-hammer.
"Sam Yates," said Mr. Belcher, "you are getting altogether too virtuous. Nothing will cure you but a good, old-fashioned drunk. Dip in, now, and take your fill. You can lie here all night if you wish to."
Mr. Belcher drew the cork, and poured out a tumblerful of the choice old liquid. Its fragrance filled the little room. It reached the nostrils of the poor slave, who shivered as if an ague had smitten him. He hesitated, advanced toward the table, retreated, looked at Mr. Belcher, then at the brandy, then walked the room, then paused before Mr. Belcher, who had coolly watched the struggle from his chair. The victim of this passion was in the supreme of torment. His old thirst was roused to fury. The good resolutions of the preceding weeks, the moral strength he had won, the motives that had come to life within him, the promise of a better future, sank away into blank nothingness. A patch of fire burned on either cheek. His eyes were bloodshot.
"Oh God! Oh God!" he exclaimed, and buried his face in his hands.
"Fudge!" said Mr. Belcher. "What do you make an ass of yourself for?"
"If you'll take these things out of the room, and see that I drink nothing to-night, I'll do anything. They are hell and damnation to me. Don't you see? Have you no pity on me? Take them away!"
Mr. Belcher was surprised, but he had secured the promise he was after, and so he coolly rose and removed the offensive temptation.
Yates sat down as limp as if he had had a sunstroke. After sitting a long time in silence, he looked up, and begged for the privilege of sleeping in the house. He did not dare to trust himself in the street until sleep had calmed and strengthened him.