h, and hospitable as a prince."

"That I 'm sure of!" chimed in Conway.

"I know it, I can swear to it; I used to dine with him every Sunday,
regularly as the day came. I'll never forget those little tough legs
of mutton,--wherever he found them there's no saying,--and those hard
pellets of capers, like big swan-shot, washed down with table beer and
whiskey-grog, and poor Kellett thinking all the while he was giving you
haunch of venison and red hermitage."

"He 'd have given them just as freely if he had them," broke in Conway,
half gruffly.

"That he would! He did so when he had it to give,--at least, so they
tell me, for I never saw the old place at Kellett's Town, or Castle
Kellett--"

"Kellett's Court was the name."

"Ay, to be sure, Kellett's Court. I wonder how I could forget it, for
I'm sure I heard it often enough."

"One forgets many a thing they ought to remember," said Conway,
significantly.

"Hit him again, he hasn't got no friends!" broke in Beecher, laughing
jovially at this rebuke of himself. "You mean, that I ought to have a
fresher memory about all old Paul's kindnesses, and you 're right there;
but if you knew how hard the world has hit _me_, how hot they 've been
giving it to me these years back, you 'd perhaps not lean so heavily on
me. Since the Epsom of '42," said he, solemnly, "I never had one chance,
not one, I pledge you my sacred word of honor. I 've had my little
'innings,' you know, like every one else,--punted for five-pun-notes
with the small ones, but never a real chance. Now, I call that hard,
deuced hard."

"I suppose it _is_ hard," said Conway; but, really, it would have been
very difficult to say in what sense his words should be taken.

"And when a fellow finds himself always on the wrong side of the road,"
said Beecher, who now fancied that he was taking a moralist's view of
life, and spoke with a philosophic solemnity,--"I say, when a fellow
sees that, do what he will, he's never on the right horse, he begins to
be soured with the world, and to think that it's all a regular 'cross.'
Not that I ever gave in. No! ask any of the fellows up at Newmarket--ask
the whole ring--ask--" he was going to say Grog Davis, when he suddenly
remembered the heavy judgment Conway had already fulminated on that
revered authority, and then, quickly correcting himself, he said, "Ask
any of the legs you like what stuff A. B. 's made of,--if he ain't
hammered iron, and no mistake!"

"But wh