68 _ DIGGING A GRAVE.

at the right time. I shall never forget the
night that we got the news. .My dear young
dady was expecting the mother’s. blessing
soon too come into the world, but. still she
would wait up for master. Now he was kind
and loving to her; but so he was to his
friends, and they could twist him, when
he was with them, like a silken ‘thread;
3 and though he’d promise my darling to be
- homie early, they’d get over him; and she
always said the way to get round him was,
the more he stayed away, the kinder to grow ;
‘but master was too soft. I hate men that
have not a good stiff backbone, to make
them stand up manfully for the right. Why, :
he knew from what the doctor had told
him, that every glass of Spirits he took,
was a glass of poison; and yet he'd take it.
If she was by, he’d let her coax it from
his lips; if she wasn’t, he’d £0 — glass after
glass; ay, after a while, whether he bee