"I wonder what has become of Bill Riley?" he at length asked, rising up with a sigh. "He hasn't been here for a week."
"Dick Hilton told me to-day that he believed he had joined the teetotallers."
"I feared as much. He was one of my very best customers; worth a clear dollar and a half a week to me, above the cost of the liquors, the year round. And Tom Jones? Where can he be?"
"Gone, too."
"Tom Jones?" in surprise.
"It's a fact. They got him on the same night Bill Riley was caught."
"Foolish fellow, to go and throw himself away in that style! Them temperance men will get from him every dollar he can earn, to build Temperance Halls, and get up processions, and buy clothes for lazy, loafing vagabonds, that had a great sight better be sent to the poorhouse. It is too bad. My very blood boils when I think what fools men are."
"And there's Harry Peters,—Dick Hilton told me that he'd gone, too."
"Not Harry Peters, surely!"
"Yes. He hasn't been near our house for several days.