ull and imperious
accents of an examining counsel. 'I have known him upwards of fifteen
years, my Lord. We went down together to Leeds in the summer of 1840 on
a little speculation with cogged dice--'"

Beecher looked up and tried to speak, but his strength failed him, and
his head fell heavily down again on the table.

"There, 'liquor up,' as the Yankees say," cried Davis, passing the
decanter towards him. "You 're a poor chicken-hearted creature, and
don't do much honor to your 'order.'"

"You 'll drive me to despair yet," muttered Beecher, in a voice scarcely
above a whisper.

"Not a bit of it, man; there's pluck in despair! You 'll never go that
far!"

Beecher grasped his glass convulsively; and as his eyes flashed wildly,
he seemed for a moment as if about to hurl it in the other's face.
Davis's look, however, appeared to abash him, and with a low, faint sigh
he relinquished his hold, while his head fell forward on his bosom.

Davis now drew near the fire, and with a leg on either side of it,
smoked away at his ease.

CHAPTER XXVII. A VISIT OF CONDOLENCE

"I think she will _see_ me," said Davenport Dunn, to the old woman
servant who opened the door to him at the Kelletts' cottage, "if you
will tell her my name: Mr. Dunn,--Mr. Davenport Dunn."

"She told me she 'd not see anybody, sir," was the obdurate reply.

"Yes; but I think when you say who it is--"

"She would not see that young man that was in the regiment with her
brother, and he was here every day, wet or dry, to ask after her."

"Well, take in my card now, and I 'll answer for it she'll not refuse
me."

The old woman took the card half sulkily from his hand, and returned in
a few minutes to say that Miss Kellett would receive him.

Dressed in mourning of the very humblest and cheapest kind, and with all
the signs of recent suffering and sorrow about her, Sybella Kellett
yet received Mr. Dunn with a calm and quiet composure for which he was
scarcely prepared.

"If I have been importunate, Miss Kellett," said he, "it is because I
desire to proffer my services to you. I feel assured that you will
not take ill this assistance on my part I would wish to be thought a
friend--"

"You were so to my father, sir," said she, interrupting, while she held
her handkerchief to her eyes.

Dunn's face grew scarlet at these words, but, fortunately for him, she
could not see it.

"I had intended to have written to you, sir," said she, with recov