“But they did not treat you like a baby, and never let you see so much as a glass of beer.”

“Well, I am going to treat you like a man, but it is a sorrowful history that I have to tell you.  You know that your mother and Aunt Wilmet are twin sisters ?”

“Oh yes, though Aunt Wilmet is stout and jolly, and mother ever so much prettier and more delicate and nice.”

“Yes, from ill-health.  She is never free from suffering.”

“I know.  Old Dr. May said there was no help for it.”

“Do you know what caused that ill-health?  My boy, they spoke of your father to-day-—brutes that they were,” he could not help muttering.

“Yes, he died when I was a week old.”

“He had ruined himself when quite a young man, body, soul, and estate-—and you too, beforehand, in estate, and broken your mother’s heart and health by being given up to that miserable habit from which we want to save you.”

“I thought it was only poor men that got drunk and beat their wives” (more knowledge, by the bye, than he was supposed to possess).  “He did not beat her?”

“Oh no, no,” said Clement, “but he as surely destroyed all her happiness, and made you and your sisters very poor for your station in life, so that it is really hard to educate you, and you will have to work for yourself and them.  And at only thirty-six years old his life was cut off.”

“Was that what D. T. meant?  I heard Ted whisper something about that.”

“It was well,” thought Clement, “that he had grace enough to whisper.  Yes, my poor boy, it is only too true.  I was sent for to find your father dying of delirium tremens—-you just born, your mother nearly dead, the desolation of your sisters unspeakable.  He was only thirty-six, and that vice, together with racing, had devoured him and all the property that should have come to his children.  I think he tried to repent at the very last, but there was little time, little power, only he put you and your sisters in my charge, and begged me to save you from being like him.”

“Did they mean that I was sure to be like that?  Like a pointer puppy, pointing.”

“They meant it.  And, Adrian, it is so far true that there is an inheritance—-with some more, with some less-—of our forefathers’ nature.  Some have tendencies harder to repress than others.  But, my dear boy, you know that we all have had a force given us wherewith to repress and conquer those tendencies, and that we can.”

“When we were baptized, God the Holy Spirit,” said Adrian, under his breath.

“You know it, you can believe now.  Your uncle Lance and I prayed that the old nature might be put down, the new raised up.  We pray, your mother and sisters have prayed ever since, that so it may be, that you may conquer any evil tendencies that may be in you; but, Adrian, no one can save you from the outside if you do not strive yourself.  Now you see why your poor mother has been so anxious to keep all temptation out of your reach.”