cape difficulties. I told her that the Brighton affair was almost
forgotten now,--it was fully eighteen years since it happened; that as
to Charles Herbert's death, there were two stories,--some averring that
poor Charley had actually struck Grog; and then, though the York trial
was a public scandal--Well, my Lord, don't look so angrily at me; it was
by no fault of _mine_ these transactions became notorious."

"And what have you been all your whole life to this Davis but his cad
and errand-boy,--a fellow he has sent with a bad horse,--for he would
not have trusted you with a good one,--to run for a hack stakes in an
obscure county, a lounger about stables and the steps of club-houses,
picking up scraps of news from the jocks and selling them to the
gentlemen? Does it become you to turn out Kit Davis and run full cry
after him?"

It was but rarely that Beecher's indignation could warm up to the
temperature of downright passion; but when it did so, it gave the man
a sort of power that few would have recognized in his weak and yielding
nature; at all events, Spicer was not the man to stem such a torrent,
and so he stared at him with mingled terror and anger.

"I tell you, Mr. Spicer," added Beecher, more passionately still, "if
you hadn't known Davis was a thousand miles away, you 'd never have
trusted yourself to speak of him in this fashion; but, for your comfort
I say it, he 'll be here in a day or two."

"I never said a word of him you 'd not find in the newspapers," said
Spicer, doggedly.

"When you come to settle accounts together, it will surprise me very
much if there won't be matter for another paragraph in them," said
Beecher, with a sneer.

Spicer winced; he tried to arrange his neckcloth, and then to button
his glove, but all his efforts could not conceal a tremor that shook
him from head to foot. Now, when Beecher got his "man down," he never
thought he could trample enough upon him; and as he walked the room in
hasty strides to and fro, he jeeringly pictured to Spicer the pleasures
of his next meeting with Davis: not, indeed, but that all his eloquence
was superfluous; it needed no descriptive powers to convince any who
enjoyed Grog's _friendship_ what his enmity might imply.

"I know him as well as _you_ do, my Lord," said Spicer, as his patience
at last gave way; "and I know, besides, there's more than half the
Continent where he can't set a foot."

"Perhaps you mentioned that, also, to my sister-i