then, my great gr-ndm-ther?" I said.

He pulled up his coat-sleeve--"Is that her name?" he said.

"Eliza ----"

There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old creature written in
red on his arm.

"YOU knew her old," he said, divining my thoughts (with his strange
knack); "I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Bury
ball. Did I not, dear, dear Miss ----?"

As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny's MAIDEN name. Her maiden name
was ----. Her honored married name was ----.

"She married your great gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won the Newmarket
Plate," Mr. Pinto dryly remarked.

Merciful powers! I remember, over the old shagreen knife and spoon case
on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print by Stubbs of that very
horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, and his fair hair flowing over his
shoulders, was over the mantel-piece, and Poseidon won the Newmarket Cup
in the year 1783!

"Yes; you are right. I danced a minuet with her at Bury that very night,
before I lost my poor leg. And I quarrelled with your grandf----, ha!"

As he said "Ha!" there came three quiet little taps on the table--it is
the middle table in the "Gray's-inn Coffee-house," under the bust of the
late Duke of W-ll-ngt-n.

"I fired in the air," he continued "did I not?" (Tap, tap, tap.) "Your
grandfather hit me in the leg. He married three months afterwards.
'Captain Brown,' I said, 'who could see Miss Sm-th without loving her?'
She is there! She is there!" (Tap, tap, tap.) "Yes, my first love--"

But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means "No."

"I forgot," he said, with a faint blush stealing over his wan features,
"she was not my first love. In Germ--- in my own country--there WAS a
young woman--"

Tap, tap, tap. There was here quite a lively little treble knock; and
when the old man said, "But I loved thee better than all the world,
Eliza," the affirmative signal was briskly repeated.

And this I declare UPON MY HONOR. There was, I have said, a bottle of
port-wine before us--I should say a decanter. That decanter was LIFTED
up, and out of it into our respective glasses two bumpers of wine were
poured. I appeal to Mr. Hart, the landlord--I appeal to James, the
respectful and intelligent waiter, if this statement is not true? And
when we had finished that magnum, and I said--for I did not now in the
least doubt of her presence--"Dear gr-nny, may we have another magnum?"
the table DISTINCTLY rapped "No."