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“It is useless, sir, to argue the point with me,” Barclay replied to this. “I will not now take the pledge–that is settled. I will take an oath of abstinence for six months. If I can keep to it that long, I can keep from drinking always.”

Seeing that further argument would be useless, the Alderman said no more, but proceeded to administer the oath. The young man then paid the required fee and turned from the office in silence.

When Alice left the room in tears, stung by the cutting rebuke of her brother, she retired to her chamber with an oppressed and aching heart. She loved him tenderly. They were, sister and brother, alone in the world, and, therefore, her affections clung the closer to him. The struggle had been a hard one in bringing herself to perform the duty which had called down upon her the anger of one for whom she would almost have given her life; and, therefore, the result was doubly painful, more particularly, as it had effected nothing, apparently, towards a change in his habits.

“But perhaps it will cause him to reflect.–If so, I will cheerfully bear his anger,” was the consoling thought that passed through her mind, after the passage of an hour, spent under the influence of most painful feelings.

“O, if he will only be more on his guard,” she went on, in thought–“if he will only give up that habit, how glad I should be!”

Just then she heard him enter, and marked the sound of his footsteps as he ascended to his own room, with a fluttering heart. In the course of fifteen or twenty minutes, he went down again, and she listened to observe if he were going out. But he entered the parlours, and then all was, again, quiet.

For some time Alice debated with herself whether she should go down to him or not, and make the effort to dispel the anger that she had aroused against her; but she could not make up her mind how to act, for she could not tell in what mood she might find him. One repulse was as much, she felt, as she could bear. At last, however, her feelings became so wrought up, that she determined to go down and seek to be reconciled. Her brother’s anger was more than she could bear.

When she entered the parlours, with her usual quiet step, she found him seated near the window, reading. He lifted his head as she came in, and she saw at a glance that all his angry feelings were gone. How lightly did her heart bound as she sprang forward!

“Will you forgive me, brother?” she said, laying her hand upon his shoulder as she stood by his side, and bent her face down until her fair cheek almost touched his own.

“Rather let me say, will you forgive me, sister?” was his reply, as he kissed her affectionately–“for the unkind repulse I gave you, when to say what you did must have caused you a most painful sacrifice of feeling?”

“Painful indeed it was, brother. But it is past now and all forgiven.”

“Since then, Alice,” he said, after a pause, “I have taken a solemn oath, administered by an Alderman, not to touch any kind of intoxicating drink for six months.”

“O, I am so glad, John!” the sister said, a joyful smile lighting up her beautiful young face. “But why did you say six months? Why not for life?”

“Because, Alice, I do not wish to bind myself down to a kind of perpetual slavery. I wish to be free, and act right in freedom from a true principle of right. Six months of entire abstinence from all kinds of liquor will destroy that appetite for it which has caused me, of late, to seek it far too often. And then I will, as a free man, remain free.”

“I shall now be so happy again, John!” Alice said, fully satisfied with her brother’s reason.