"I heard the whole sad story to-day," continued Mr. Elliott. He did
not even attempt to struggle up again, but abandoned himself to his
fate. Soon after, he was removed from the command of this department
and sent off to the Western frontier, and finally court-martialed
and dismissed from the army.
"To his wife, who was deeply attached to him, General Abercrombie
was when sober one of the kindest and most devoted of husbands, but
a crazy and cruel fiend when drunk. It is said that on the night he
went home from your house last winter strange noises and sudden
cries of fear were heard in their room, and that Mrs. Abercrombie
when seen next morning looked as if she had just come from a bed of
sickness. She accompanied him to the West, but I learned today that
since his dismissal from the army his treatment of her has been so
outrageous and cruel that she has had to leave him in fear of her
life, and is now with her friends, a poor broken-hearted woman. As
for the general, no one seems to know what has become of him."
"And the responsibility of all this you would lay at my door?" said
Mr. Birtwell, in a husky voice, through which quivered a tone of
anger. "But I reject your view of the case entirely. General
Abercrombie fell because he had no strength of purpose and no
control of his appetite. He happened to trip at my house--that is
all. He would have fallen sooner or later somewhere.
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