If it had not been for his father's bad advice he, Luke, would now have been working comfortably at a trade in the village that he had never wished to leave.
After reading the letter the sergeant advanced a few steps till he was quite out of sight of everybody, and then sat down on the bank by the wayside.
When he arose half-an-hour later he looked withered and broken, and from that day his natural spirits left him.

Wounded to the quick by his son's sarcastic stings, he indulged in liquor more and more frequently.

His wife had died some years before this date, and the sergeant lived alone in the house which had been hers.

One morning in the December under notice the report of a gun had been heard on his premises, and on entering the neighbours found him in a dying state.

He had shot himself with an old firelock that he used for scaring birds; and from what he had said the day before, and the arrangements he had made for his decease, there was no doubt that his end had been deliberately planned, as a consequence of the despondency into which he had been thrown by his son's letter.