how long?"

"Forever!" said she, stooping down and kissing his forehead. The next
moment she was gone.

"Come, Conway," said the doctor, "cheer up, my good fellow; you 'll be
all right in a week or so. You 've got something worth living for, too,
if all accounts be true."

"More than you think for, doctor," said Conway, heartily,--"far more
than you think for."

"The lawyer talks of a peerage and a fine estate."

"Far more than that," cried Conway; "a million times better."

The surgeon turned a look of half apprehension on the sick man, and,
gently closing the shutters, he withdrew.

Dark as was that room, and silent as it was, what blissful hopes and
blessed anticipations crowded and clustered around that low "sick-bed"!
What years of happiness unfolded themselves before that poor brain,
which no longer felt a pang, save in the confusion of its bright
imaginings! How were wounds forgotten and sufferings unminded in those
hours wherein a whole future was revealed!

At last he fell off to sleep, and to dream of a fair white hand that
parted the hair upon his forehead, and then gently touched his feverish
cheek. Nor was it all a dream; she was at his bedside.

CHAPTER XXXIII. "GROG" IN COUNCIL

"What dreary little streets are those that lead from the Strand towards
the Thames! Pinched, frail, semi-genteel, and many-lodgered are the
houses, mysteriously indicative of a variously occupied population, and
painfully suggesting, by the surging conflict of busy life at one end,
and the dark flowing river at the other, an existence maintained between
struggle and suicide." This, most valued reader, if no reflection of
mine, but was the thought that occupied the mind of one who, in not
the very best of humors, and of a wet and dreary night, knocked,
in succession, at half the doors in the street in search after an
acquaintance.

"Yes, sir, the second back," said a sleepy maid-servant at last; "he is
just come in."

"All right," said the stranger. "Take that carpet-bag and writing-desk
upstairs to his room, and say that Captain Davis is coming after them.'"

"You owe me a tip, Captain," said the cabman, catching the name as he
was about to mount his box. "Do you remember the morning I drove you
down to Blackwall to catch the Antwerp boat, I went over Mr. Moss, the
sheriff's officer, and smashed his ankle, and may I never taste bitters
again if I got a farthing for it."

"I remember," said Davis, curtly. "H