t or some blemish in his nature. He is a coarse fellow; rude,
vulgar, a coxcomb, or, worst of all, a bore. In some such disposition
as this Beecher quitted the town, and strolled away into the country.
He felt he hated the Count, and yet he could not perceive why; Lienstahl
possessed a vast number of the qualities he was generally disposed to
like. He was gay, lively, light-hearted, never out of humor, never even
thoughtful; his was that easy temperament that seemed to adapt itself
to every phase of life. What was it, then? What could it be that he
disliked about him? It was somewhat "cool," too, of Grog, to send this
fellow over without even the courtesy of a line to himself. "Serve
him right--serve them all right--if I were to cut my lucky;" and he
ruminated long and anxiously over the thought. His present position was
anything but pleasant or flattering to him. For aught _he_ knew,
the Count and Lizzy Davis passed their time laughing at his English
ignorance of all things foreign. By dint of a good deal of such
self-tormenting, he at last reached that point whereat the very
slightest additional impulse would have determined him to decamp from
his party, and set out all alone for Italy. The terror of a day of
reckoning with Davis was, however, a dread that he could never shake
off. Grog the unforgiving, the inexorable! Grog, whose greatest boast
in his vainglorious moments was that, in the "long run," no man ever got
the better of him, would assuredly bring him to book one day or other;
and he knew the man's nature well enough to be aware that no fear of
personal consequences would ever balk him on the road to a vengeance.

Sometimes the thought occurred to him that he would make a frank and
full confession to Lackington of all his delinquencies, even to that
terrible "count" by which the fame and fortune of his house might be
blasted forever. If he could but string up his courage to this pitch,
Lackington might "pull him through," Lackington would see that "there
was nothing else for it," and so on. It is marvellous what an apparent
strength of argument lies in those slang expressions familiar to certain
orders of men. These conventionalities seem to settle at once questions
which, if treated in more befitting phraseology, would present the
gravest difficulties.

He walked on and on, and at last gained a pine wood which skirted the
base of a mountain, and soon lost himself in its dark recesses. Gloomier
than the pla