"I am on my way to the store."
"Any life and death in the case?"
"No.—Only I'm to be married to-night, as you are aware; and, consequently, am hardly able to tell whether I am on my head or my heels."
"True enough! And besides, you are a free man today, are you not?"
"Yes, Watson, thank Heaven! that trammel will be off in half an hour."
"You must be fond of trammels, John, seeing that you are going to put another on so soon after getting rid of this—" the friend said, laughing heartily at his jest.
"That will be a lighter, and far pleasanter bondage I trust, Watson, than the one from which I am about escaping. It will be an easy yoke compared to the galling one under which I have toiled for the last six months. Still, I do not regret having bound myself as I did. It was necessary to give me that self-control which I had well-nigh lost. Now I shall be able to act like a rational man, and be temperate from principle, and not from a mere external restraint that made me little better than a machine."
"Your time will be up, you say, in half an hour?"
"Yes—" looking at his watch—"in ten minutes. It is later than I thought."
"Come, then, let us go over to R—'s—it is full ten minutes' walk from here—and take a drink to freedom and principle."