if they were he couldn’t see them, and if he heard them he would be frightened of their hearing him. But here he comes!”
A shuffling quick step on the path; a running grumble of unmistakable threats; a shambling moonlit figure seen in glimpses through the leaves, very near us for an instant, then hidden by the shrubbery as he passed within a few yards of our hiding-place. A diminuendo of the shuffling steps; then a cursing, frightened savage at one end of the rhododendrons, and we two stealing
drinker” in the most literal sense of that slightly elastic term. But at the sad time of which I am trying to write, I was almost an abstainer, from the fear, the temptation - of seeking oblivion in strong waters. To give way then was to go on giving way. I realized the danger, and I took stern measures.