touch of our quality.' I know all their
games well, and I 've had my 'three bullets and a poker' before now on
a Mississippi steamer! Your Yankee likes faro, and I've a new cabal to
teach him; in short, my boy, there's a roving commission of fun before
us, and if it don't pay, _my_ name ain't Davis!"

"Was this your scheme, then, Grog," asked Beecher, "when you told me at
Brussels that you could make a man of me?"

"It was, my boy," cried Davis, eagerly. "You 've guessed it. There was
only one obstacle to the success of the plan at that time, and this
exists no longer."

"What was the obstacle you speak of?"

"Simply, that so long as you fancied yourself next in succession to a
peerage, you 'd never lay yourself down regularly to your work; you'd
say, 'Lackington can't live forever; he's almost twenty years my senior.
I must be the Viscount yet. Why should I, therefore, cumber myself with
cares that I have no need of, and involve myself amongst people I'll
have to cut one of these days? No, I'll just make a waiting race of
it, and be patient.' Now, however, that you can't count upon this
prospect,--now that to-morrow or next day will declare to the world that
Henry Hastings Beecher is just Henry Hastings Beecher, and not Viscount
Lackington, and that the Honorable Annesley is just Annesley, and no
more,--now, I say, that you see this clearly with your own eyes, you 'll
buckle to, and do your work manfully. And there was another thing--"
And here Davis paused, and seemed to meditate.

"What was that, Grog? Be candid, old fellow, and tell me all."

"So I will, then," resumed Davis. "That other thing was this. So long
as you were the great man in prospective, and might some fine day be
a Lord, you could always persuade yourself--or some one else could
persuade you--that Kit Davis was hanging on you just for your rank; that
he wanted the intimacy of a man in your station, and so on. Now, if
you ever came to believe this, there would have been an end of all
confidence between us; and without confidence, what can a fellow do for
his pal? This was, therefore, the obstacle; and even if you could have
got over it, _I_ couldn't. No, hang me if I could! I was always saying
to myself, 'It's all very nice and smooth now, Kit, between you and
Beecher,--you eat, drink, and sleep together,--but wait till he turns
the corner, old fellow, and see if he won't give you the cold shoulder."

"You could n't believe--"

"Yes, but I co