Through by Daylight by Oliver Optic

For the first time in my life I had some fears in regard to meeting my father. I dreaded the terrible infirmity which was beginning to develop itself anew in him. Under ordinary circumstances I should have been glad to see him; and with a hundred dollars in my pocket -- the first money I had ever earned by my knowledge and skill -- I should have been delighted to tell him the history of the day. I should have been sure of a proud and sympathetic listener in him as I detailed the means I had used to raise the dummy.

I feared two things -- first, that he would be intoxicated; and second, that he would remember against me the deed I had done with the strange-looking bottle in the forenoon. In relation to the latter, I had come to see that the destruction of the whiskey was not the only or the greater cause of offence. By emptying the bottle, I had censured him, virtually, and made myself a judge of his condition and conduct. My father was a plucky man, in spite of his position as an employee of Colonel Wimpleton, and, right or wrong, would not suffer any one to be a censor upon his actions.