Gordon shook his head and looked grave.
"What's the matter? Won't you do it?"
"No, sir. I can't do that."
"Why?"
"Because I have sworn neither to taste, touch, nor handle the accursed thing. Neither to drink it myself, nor put it to the lips of another. No, no, Mr. King, I can't do that. But I will sell your groceries for you three days in the week, for four weeks. Part of my time is already regularly engaged."
"Go off about your business!" said the store-keeper, his face red with anger at the language of the reformed man, which he was pleased to consider highly insulting. "I'll see to collecting that bill in a different way from that."
By this time Gordon was learning not to be frightened and discouraged at every thing. His wife had so often showed him its folly, that he felt ashamed to go to her again in a desponding mood, and therefore cheered himself up before going home.
In other quarters he found rather better success. Not all of those he owed were of the stamp of the two to whom application had last been made. In less than six months he had worked out nearly a hundred dollars of what he owed, and had regular employment that brought him in six dollars every week, besides earning, by odd jobs and light porterage, from two to three dollars. His wife rarely let a week go without producing her one or two dollars by needle-work. Little comforts gradually crept in, notwithstanding all their debts were not yet paid off. This was inevitable.
By the end of twelve months Gordon found himself clear of debt, and in a good situation in a store at five hundred dollars a year.
"So much for 'Time, Faith, Energy,'" he said to himself, as he walked backwards and forwards, in his comfortable little home, one evening, thinking of the incidents of the year, and the results that had followed. "I would not have believed it. Scarcely a twelvemonth has passed, and here am I, a sober man and out of debt."