Truth was so strong in the words of his wife, that Mr. Hobart did not attempt to gainsay them.

“I believe you are right,” he replied with a good deal of depression apparent in his manner.  “I wish the doctor had kept his brandy advice to himself.  It has done me no good.”

“It has done you harm,” said his wife.

“Perhaps it has.  Ah, me!  I wish the cholera would subside.”

“I think your fear is too great,” returned Mrs. Hobart.  “Go on in your usual way; keep your mind calm; be as careful in regard to diet, and you need fear no danger.”

“I wish I’d let the brandy alone!” sighed Mr. Hobart, who felt as he spoke, the desire for another draught.

“So do I. Doctor L—­must have been mad when he advised it.”

“So I now think.  I heard yesterday of two or three members of our Order who have been sick, and every one of them used a little brandy as a preventive.”

“It is bad—­bad.  Common sense teaches this.  No great change of habit is good in a tainted atmosphere.  But you see this now, happily, and all will yet be well I trust.”

“Yes; I hope so.  I shall touch no more of this brandy preventive.  To that my mind is fully made up.”

Mrs. Hobart felt hopeful when she parted with her husband.  But she knew nothing of the real conflict going on in his mind between reason and awakened appetite—­else had she trembled and grown faint in spirit.  This conflict went on for some hours, when, alas! appetite conquered.

At dinner time Mrs. Hobart saw at a glance how it was.  The whole manner of her husband had changed.  His state of depression was gone, and he exhibited an unnatural exhilaration of spirits.  She needed not the sickening odor of his breath to tell the fatal secret that he had been unable to control himself.

It was worse at night.  He came home so much beside himself that he could with difficulty walk erectly.  Half conscious of his condition, he did not attempt to join the family, but went up stairs and groped his way to bed.  Mrs. Hobart did not follow him to his chamber.  Heartsick, she retired to another room, and there wept bitterly for more than an hour.  She was hopeless.  Up from the melancholy past arose images of degradation and suffering too dreadful to contemplate.  She felt that she had not strength to suffer again as she had suffered through many, many years.  From this state she was aroused by groans from the room where her husband lay.  Alarmed by the sounds, she instantly went to him.

“What is the matter?” she asked, anxiously.

“Oh! oh!  I am in so much pain!” was groaned half inarticulately.

“In pain, where?”

“Oh! oh!” was repeated, in a tone of suffering; and then he commenced vomiting.

Mrs. Hobart placed her hand upon his forehead and found it cold and clammy.  Other and more painful symptoms followed.  Before the doctor, who was immediately summoned, arrived, his whole system had become prostrate, and was fast sinking into a state of collapse.  It was a decided case of cholera.