“Sneaking up to that attic too!” exploded his wife furiously. “You would! You would do a thing like that! Putting yourself under the influence of that Man!—letting him twist you round his little finger—till you actually want to take the food out of the mouths of your own helpless little children! There you sit,” she went on hysterically, “actually telling me that you wouldn’t mind if the business were ruined. Our hotel! The most prosperous and well-conducted inn in the whole Valley! I wonder you don’t choke on the words!”

“Listen, Murmuring,” said her husband, as though suddenly deciding to speak frankly and fully. “Listen to me. What sort of business is this really? Ask yourself honestly. You say it is respectable as well as profitable. Do you really believe that? Look at the fruits of the business, Murmuring. Look at your own poor, demoralized brother Moody. If it were not for our ‘respectable bar’ would he be where he is now—in jail for half killing his wife? Consider that poor girl upstairs, not only deprived of her child, but probably also of the joy of becoming a mother for the rest of her life. Look at our own children, Murmuring, and put yourself in her place.”

Then he went on, without waiting for a reply, and his voice shook with emotion or pain, “And look at my cousin, Craven Fear, poor thing, also in prison for assault and disorderly behavior while under the influence of drink which he likewise obtained in our ‘respectable barroom.’”

“Craven Fear was always a bully,” interpolated his wife hastily. “It was not just that once. He has only got what was coming to him for a long time.”

“Exactly,” agreed her husband in a heavy voice. “But his outbreaks of bullying were always when he was the worse for drink. Craven Fear has been drinking in this ‘respectable barroom’ of ours ever since he left school, and he was sneaking drinks long before that, and you know it.”

His wife was silent.

“And then think of the effect on our own children,” went on Bitterness in a voice that trembled. “That is what shakes me. That comes still nearer home. What if they follow on in the same way and come under the same curse? Do you wonder, Murmuring, that I have been feeling that it would be a relief if we could get away from the business altogether?”

His words seemed only to rouse her to greater fury. “It’s all the doing of the Shepherd,” she exclaimed, almost choking with anger. “It’s the Shepherd who has put these thoughts into your head. What else has he been saying to you? Tell me!”

“He said,” answered her husband slowly, “that we shall never know real peace and happiness, or indeed, real prosperity, until we give up this business altogether.”