y over
his nature as distrust. It was, in fact, the solitary lesson his life's
experience had taught him. He fancied that he could trace every mistake
he had ever made, every failure he had ever incurred, to some unlucky
movement of credulity on his own part, and that "believing" was the one
great error of his whole life. He had long been of opinion that high
station and character had no greater privileges than the power they
possessed of imposing a certain trustfulness in their pledges, and that
the great "pull" a duke had over a "leg" was that his Grace would be
believed in preference. But it also appeared to him that rogues were
generally true to each other; now, if this last hope were to be taken
away, what was there left in life to cling to? Spicer had said, "Davis
wants him." What did that mean?--what could it mean? Simply that Grog
found him, not an associate or colleague, but a convenient tool. What an
intolerable insult, that he, the Honorable Annesley Beecher, whose great
connections rambled through half Debrett, was to be accounted a mere
outpost sentry in the corps of Grog Davis!

His anger increased as he went along. The wound to his self-esteem was
in the very tenderest spot of his nature. Had any man ever sacrificed
so much to be a sharp fellow as he had? Who had, like him, given up
friends, station, career, and prospects? Who had voluntarily surrendered
the society of his equals, and gone down to the very dregs of mankind,
just to learn that one great secret? And was it to be all in vain?
Was all his training and teaching to go for nothing? Was he, after
descending to the ranks, to discover that he never could learn
the manual exercise? How often, in the gloomiest hours of his
disappointment, had he hugged the consolation to his heart, that Grog
Davis knew and valued him! "Ask G. D. if I'm a flat," was the proud
rejoinder he would hurl at any attempt to depreciate his shrewdness.
What was to become of him, then, if the bank that held all his fortune
were to fail? If Beecher deemed a sharp fellow the most enviable of all
mortals, so he regarded a dupe as the meanest and most miserable, and
the very thought of such a fate was almost maddening. "No, confound me!
they sha'n't have it to say that they 'landed' A. B.; they shall never
boast they nobbled me," cried he, warming with the indignation that
worked within him. "I 'm off, and this time without beat of drum. Davis
may do his worst. I'll lie by snug for