knows you this many a day."

"But why have I not had the happiness of knowing _her?_" asked Beecher.

"How 's Klepper?" asked Grog, abruptly. "The swelling gone out of the
hocks yet?"

"Yes; he's clean as a whistle."

"The wind-gall, too,--has that gone?"

"Going rapidly; a few days' walking exercise will make him perfect."

"No news of Spicer and his German friend,--though I expected to have
had a telegraph all day yesterday. But come, these are not interesting
matters for Lizzy,--we 'll have up dinner, and see about a box for the
opera."

"A very gallant thought, papa, which I accept with pleasure."

"I must dress, I suppose," said Beecher, half asking; for even yet he
could not satisfy his mind what amount of observance was due to the
daughter of Grog Davis.

"I conclude you must," said she, smiling; "and I too must make a
suitable toilette;" and, with a slight bow and a little smile, she swept
past them out of the room.

"How close you have been, old fellow,--close as wax,--about this," said
Beecher; "and hang me, if she mightn't be daughter to the proudest Duke
in England!"

"So she might," said Grog; "and it was to make her so, I have consented
to this life of separation. What respect and deference would the fellows
show _my_ daughter when I wasn't by? How much delicacy would she meet
with when the fear of an ounce ball wasn't over them? And was I going to
bring her up in such a set as you and I live with? Was a young creature
like that to begin the world without seeing one man that wasn't a
leg, or one woman that wasn't worse? Was it by lessons of robbery and
cheating her mind was to be stored? And was she to start in life by
thinking that a hell was high society? Look at her _now_," said he,
sternly, "and say if I was in Norfolk Island to-morrow, where 's the
fellow that would have the pluck to insult her? It is true _she_ doesn't
know me as you and the others know me; but the man that would let her
into _that_ secret would never tell her another." There was a terrible
fierceness in his eye as he spoke, and the words came from him with a
hissing sound like the venomous threatenings of a serpent. "_She_ knows
nothing of _my_ life nor _my_ ways. Except your own name, she never
heard me mention one of the fellows we live with. She knows _you_ to be
the brother of Lord Viscount Lack-ington, and that you are the Honorable
Annesley Beecher, that's all she knows of _you_; ain't that little
enough?"

Be