forward.

"You forget me, I see; my name is Butler."

"Eh! what! I ought not to forget you," said he, rising, and grasping the
other's hand warmly; "how are you? when did you come up to town? You see
the eye is all right; it was a bit swollen for more than a fortnight,
though. Hech, sirs! but you have hard knuckles of your own."

It was not easy to apologize for the rough treatment he had inflicted,
and Tony blundered and stammered in his attempts to do so; but M'Gruder
laughed it all off with perfect good-humor, and said, "My wife will
forgive you, too, one of these days, but not just yet; and so we'll go
and have a bit o' dinner our two selves down the river. Are you free
to-day?"

Tony was quite free and ready to go anywhere; and so away they went,
at first by river steamer, and then by a cab, and then across some
low-lying fields to a small solitary house close to the Thames,--"Shads,
chops, and fried-fish house," over the door, and a pleasant odor of each
around the premises.

"Ain't we snug here? no tracking a man this far," said M'Grader, as
he squeezed into a bench behind a fixed table in a very small room. "I
never heard of the woman that ran her husband to earth down here."

That this same sense of security had a certain value in M'Grader's
estimation was evident, for he more than once recurred to the sentiment
as they sat at dinner.

The tavern was a rare place for "hollands," as M'Grader said; and they
sat over a peculiar brew for which the house was famed, but of which
Tony's next day's experiences do not encourage me to give the receipt
to my readers. The cigars, too, albeit innocent of duty, might have been
better; but all these, like some other pleasures we know of, only were
associated with sorrow in the future. Indeed, in the cordial freedom
that bound them they thought very little of either. They had grown to be
very confidential; and M'Gruder, after inquiring what Tony proposed to
himself by way of a livelihood, gave him a brief sketch of his own rise
from very humble beginnings to a condition of reasonably fair comfort
and sufficiency.

"I 'm in rags, ye see, Mr. Butler," said he, "my father was in rags
before me."

"In rags!" cried Tony, looking at the stout sleek broadcloth beside him.

"I mean," said the other, "I 'm in the rag trade, and we supply the
paper-mills; and that's why my brother Sam lives away in Italy. Italy is
a rare place for rags,--I take it they must have no other wea