hasten away from Aix,
and from the chance of hearing that his brother was hopelessly ill.
While Grog penned these lines, he would have given--if he had it--ten
thousand pounds that Beecher was beside him. Ay, willingly had he given
it, and more, too, that Beecher might be where no voice could whisper
to him the marvellous change that any moment might cause in his destiny.
Oh, ye naturalists, who grow poetical over the grub and the butterfly,
what is there, I ask ye, in the transformation at all comparable with
that when the younger brother, the man of strait and small fortune,
springs into the peer, exchanging a life of daily vicissitudes, cheap
dinners and duns, dubious companionships and high discounts, for the
assured existence, the stately banquets, the proud friendships, the pomp
and circumstance of a lord? In a moment he soars out of the troubled
atmosphere of debts and disabilities, and floats into the balmy region
whose very sorrows never wear an unbecoming mourning.

Grog's note was thus a small specimen of what the great Talleyrand used
to call the perfection of despatch writing, "not the best thing that
could be said on the subject, but simply that which would produce
the effect you desired." Having sent off this to Beecher, he then
telegraphed to his man of business, Mr. Peach, to ascertain at Fordyce's
the latest accounts of Lord Lackington's health, and answer "by wire."

It was far into the night when Davis betook himself to bed, but not to
sleep. The complications of the great game he was playing had for him
all the interest of the play-table. The kind of excitement he gloried
in was to find himself pitted against others,--wily, subtle, and
deep-scheming as himself,--to see some great stake on the board, and to
feel that it must be the prize of the best player. With the gambler's
superstition, he kept constantly combining events with dates and eras,
recalling what of good or ill-luck had marked certain periods of his
life. He asked himself if September had usually been a fortunate month;
did the 20th imply anything; what influence might Holy Paul exert over
his destiny; was he merely unlucky himself, or did he bring evil fortune
upon others? If he suffered himself to dwell upon such "vain auguries"
as these, they still exerted little other sway over his mind than to
nerve it to greater efforts; in fact, he consulted these signs as a
physician might investigate certain symptoms which, if not of moment
e