will be as I wish, and I shall then be as happy as Tucker."

Following this came the questions, How? When? Where shall I
begin?--but he put them angrily aside and refilled his glass. A
great good-humour possessed him, and, as he drank, all the
unpleasant things of life--loss, unrest, heavy labour--vanished
in the roseate glow that pervaded his thoughts.

What came of it was not quite clear to him next day, and this
caused the uneasiness that lasted for a week. He had a vague
recollection that Tom Spade took the boy home and rolled him
through the window, and that he himself went whistling to his bed
with the glorious sensation that he was riding the crest of a big
wave. With the morning came a severe headache and the ineffectual
effort to remember just how far it had all gone, and then a sharp
anxiety, which vanished when he saw Will pass on his way to
school.

"The boy was none the worse for it," Tom Spade told him later;
"he had a drop too much, to be sure, but his legs were as steady
as mine, an' he slept it off in an hour. He's a ticklish chap,
Mr. Christopher," the storekeeper added after a moment, "an' I'd
keep my hands from meddlin' with him, if I was you. That thing
shan't happen agin at my place, an' it wouldn't have happened
then if I'd been around at the beginnin'. You may tamper with yo'
own salvation as much as you please--that's my gospel, but I'll
be hanged if you've got a right to tamper with anybody else's."

Christopher wheeled suddenly about and gave him a keen glance
from under his lowered eyelids. For the first time he detected a