Explore "Through by Daylight" by Oliver Optic on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
My mother wept as she thought of the past, and dreaded the future. It would have been comparatively easy to endure the loss of the twenty-four hundred dollars; but it was intolerable to think of the misery of again being a drunkard's wife. All else was as nothing to her beside this awful prospect. My father had struggled with his besetting and his besotting sin for five years, and with hardly an exception had always been the conqueror. During this period he had prospered in his worldly affairs, and till this day of disaster the future seemed to be secure to him.
My mother told me I had done right in emptying the bottle, and assured me that my father would not long cherish his anger. She knew not what to do in order to turn the tide which had set against us. If the sheriff succeeded in arresting Christy, and securing the money he had stolen, the effect upon my father would be good. If the money was lost, we feared that father would be lost with it.