60 THE TEMPERANCE MEETING

 

taverns in the village, which was sold at
the death of the owner, and assume the
responsibility of a public-house for the
entertainment of travellers. People won-
. dered. They could not understand it.
How a man who never seemed to have
more than fifty dollars’ worth of things
in his shop could save up three or four
hundred dollars in a year—the amount of
cash paid down by Miller—passed their
simple comprehension. None but he knew
how many glasses and pints were sold in a
day, nor how much profit was made on
every dram.

Two years after this the tavern-stand was
sold. Miller was the purchaser, and paid
down a thousand dollars of the purchase-
money! It was a mystery to every one
how a man who had been before so thrift- -
less should now be getting along so fast.

A couple of years more and Miller bought
a farm in the neighbourhood, which one of
his best customers, who had fallen into in-
temperate habits, had neglected, and who,