CHAPTER XII
GUS PLUM'S STORY
"You may think it strange when I tell you that I come by my appetite for liquor naturally, yet such is a fact," began Gus Plum, after a pause, during which he seemed to collect his thoughts. "You fellows who don't know what such an appetite is are lucky—far more lucky than you can realize. It's an awful thing to have such an appetite—it makes one feel at times as though he were doomed.
"We always had liquor at our house and my folks drank it at meals, just as their folks had done before them, so I heard. When I was a small boy I was allowed to have my glass of wine, and on holidays we had punch and I got my share. Sometimes, I can remember, friends remonstrated with my folks for letting me have the stuff, but my father would laugh and say it was all right—that he had had it himself when he was a boy and that it wouldn't hurt me. My father never drank to excess, to my knowledge, but his brother, my uncle, did, and once when Uncle Jim was under the in-
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