ese attempts
through,--if you could give her a pot of money. Yes, Master Davis, there
are fellows--and with good blood in their veins--that, for fifty or
sixty thousand pounds, would marry even _your_ daughter." With this last
remark he finished all his reflections, and proceeded to prepare for
bed.

Sleep, however, would not come; he was restless and uneasy; the incident
in the theatre might get abroad, and his own name be mentioned; or it
might be that Hamilton, knowing well who and what Davis was, would
look to him, Beecher, for satisfaction. There was another pleasant
eventuality,--to be drawn into a quarrel and shot for Grog Davis's
daughter! To be the travelling-companion of such a man was bad enough;
to risk being seen with him on railroads and steamboats was surely
sufficient; but to be paraded in places of public amusement, to be
dragged before the well-dressed world, not as his chance associate,
but as a member of his domestic circle, chaperoning his daughter to the
opera, was downright intolerable! And thus was it that this man, who
had been dunned and insulted by creditors, hunted from place to place by
sheriff's officers, browbeaten by bankruptcy practitioners, stigmatized
by the press, haunted all the while by a conscience that whispered there
was even worse hanging over him, yet did he feel more real terror from
the thought of how he would be regarded by his own "order" for
this unseemly intimacy, than shame for all his deeper and graver
transgressions.

"No," said he, at last, springing from his bed, and lighting his candle,
"I 'll be off. I 'll cut my lucky, Master Grog; and here goes to write
you half a dozen lines to break the fact to you. I 'll call it a sudden
thought--a notion--that I ought to see Lackington at once. I 'll say
that I could n't think of subjecting Miss Davis to the inconvenience of
that rapid mode of travelling I feel to be so imminently necessary. I
'll tell him that as I left the theatre, I saw one of Fordyce's clerks,
that the fellow knew me and grinned, and that I know I shall be arrested
if I stay here. I 'll hint that Hamilton, who is highly connected, will
have the English Legation at us all. Confound it, he 'll believe none of
these. I 'll just say"--Here he took his pen and wrote,--

"Dear D.,--After we parted last night, a sudden caprice
seized me that I 'd start off at once for Italy. Had you
been alone, old fellow, I should never have thought of it;