He had been drinking, until he was half stupid, and was a loser at the gaming-table of nearly six hundred dollars.

A feeble effort was made by him to go into an examination of the business of the day; but he found it impossible to fix his mind thereon, and so gave up the attempt.

He remained at his store until ready to close up for the day, and then turned his steps homeward.
By this time he was a good deal sobered, and sadder for his sobriety; for, as his mind became clearer, he remembered, with more vividness, the events of the day, and particularly the fact of having lost several hundred dollars to his pretended friend, Carlton.
"Whither am I going?
Where is this to end ?" was his shuddering ejaculation, as the imminent peril of his position most vividly presented itself.
How hopelessly he wended his reluctant way homeward! There was nothing to lean upon there.

No strength of ever-enduring love, to be, as it were, a second self to him in his weakness.

No outstretched arm to drag him, with something of super-human power, out of the miry pit into which he had fallen; but, instead, an indignant hand to thrust him farther in.
"God help me!" he sighed, in the very bitterness of a hopeless spirit; "for there is no aid in man." Ah! if, in his weakness, he had only leaned, in true dependence, on Him he thus asked to help him; if he had but resisted the motions of evil in himself, as sins against his Maker, and resisted them in a determined spirit, he need not have fallen; strength would, assuredly, have been given.
The nearer Ellis drew to his home, the more unhappy he felt at the thought of meeting his wife.