all, he is but a fly-wheel in that
machine of government of which there are some hundred other component
parts, all well fitting and proportioned. _Precis_ writers and private
secretaries cram, colleagues advise him. The routine of official life
hedges him in his proper groove; and if not overcome by indolence or
affected by zeal, he can scarcely blunder. Not so your man of straits
and emergency, your fellow living by his wits, and wresting from the
world, that fancies it does not want him, reward and recognition. It
is no marvel if a proud three-decker sail round the globe; but very
different is our astonishment if a cockboat come safely from the China
Seas, or brave the stormy passage round the Cape. Such a craft as this
was Grog, his own captain: himself the crew, he had neither owner nor
underwriter; and yet, amidst the assembled navies of the world, he would
have shown his bunting!

The unbroken calm of his present existence was most favorable to these
musings, and left him to plan his campaign in perfect quiet Whether the
people of the inn regarded him as a great minister in disgrace come,
by hard study, to retrieve a lost position, a man of science deeply
immersed in some abstruse problem, or a distinguished author seeking
isolation for the free exercise of his imagination, they treated him
not only with great respect, but a sort of deference was shown in their
studious effort to maintain the silence and stillness around. When he
was supposed to be at his studies, not a voice was heard, not a footfall
on the stairs. There is no such flattery to your man of scapes and
accidents, your thorough adventurer, as that respectful observance that
implies he is a person of condition. It is like giving of free will
to the highwayman the purse he expected to have a fight for. Davis
delighted in these marks of deference, and day by day grew more eager in
exacting them.

"I heard some noise outside there this morning, Carl," said he to the
waiter; "what was the meaning of it?" For a moment or two the waiter
hesitated to explain; but after a little went on to speak of a stranger
who had been a resident of the inn for some months back without ever
paying his bill; the law, singularly enough, not giving the landlord
the power of turning him adrift, but simply of ceasing to afford him
sustenance, and waiting for some opportunity of his leaving the house to
forbid his re-entering it. Davis was much amused at this curious piece
o