ch other, but a gay
and lively spirit pervaded the conversation, and two seemingly more
light-hearted fellows it were hard to find.

As the chemist is able by the minutest drop, an almost imperceptible
atom of some subtle ingredient, to change the properties of some vast
mass, altering color and odor and taste at once, so did the great artist
Grog Davis know how to deal with the complicated nature of Beecher,
that he could at any moment hurl him down into the blackest depths of
despair, or elevate him to the highest pinnacle of hope and enjoyment.
The glorious picture of a race-course, with all its attendant rogueries,
betting-stands crammed with "fats," a ring crowded with "green-horns,"
was a tableau of which he never wearied. Now, this was a sort of
landscape Grog touched off neatly. All the figures he introduced were
life-studies, every tint and shade and effect taken carefully from
nature. With a masterly hand he sketched out a sort of future campaign,
artfully throwing Beecher himself into the foreground, and making him
fancy that he was in some sort necessary to the great events before
them.

"Mumps did not touch his hock, I hope, when he kicked there?" asked
Beecher.

"Call him Klepper,--never forget that," remonstrated Grog; "he's
remarkably like Mumps, that's all; but Mumps is in Staffordshire,--one
of the Pottery fellows has him."

"So he is," laughed Beecher, pleasantly. "I know the man that owns him."

"No, you don't," broke in Davis; "you've only heard his name,--it
is Coulson or Cotton, or something like that. One thing, however, is
certain: he values him at twelve hundred pounds, and we 'd sell our
horse for eight."

"So we would, Grog, and be on the right side of the hedge too."

"He'd be dog cheap for it," said Davis; "he's one of those lazy beggars
that never wear out. I 'd lay an even thousand on it that he runs this
day two years as he does to-day, and even when he has n't speed for a
flat race he 'll be a rare steeple-chase horse."

Beecher's eyes glistened, and he rubbed his hands with delight as he
heard him.

"I do like an ugly horse," resumed Davis; "a heavy-shouldered beast,
with lob-ears, lazy eyes, and capped hocks, and if they know how to come
out a stable with a 'knuckle over' of the pastern, or a little bit lame,
they 're worth their weight in gold."

What a merry laugh was Beecher's as he listened!

"Blow me!" cried Grog, in a sort of enthusiasm, "if some horses don't
seem