"One of their gags," he said, laughing. "But I'm too old a stager
not to see the flimsiness of such pretensions. Poverty and crime
have their origin in the corrupt heart, and their foundations are
laid long and long before the first step is taken on the road to
inebriety. It is easy to promise results; for only the few look at
causes, and trace them to their effects."

"Rum and ruin (hic). Are they not cause and effect?" asked Grimes.

"Sometimes they are," was the half extorted answer.

"Oh, Green, is that you?" exclaimed the judge, as Harvey Green
came in with a soft cat-like step. He was, evidently, glad of a
chance to get rid of his familiar friend and elector.

I turned my eyes upon the man, and read his face closely. It was
unchanged. The same cold, sinister eye; the same chiselled mouth,
so firm now, and now yielding so elastically; the same smile "from
the teeth outward"--the same lines that revealed his heart's deep,
dark selfishness. If he had indulged in drink during the five
intervening years, it had not corrupted his blood, nor added
thereto a single degree of heat.

"Have you seen anything of Hammond this evening?" asked Judge
Lyman.

"I saw him an hour or two ago," answered Green.

"How does he like his new horse?"