o longer
mysteries.

All the delight an old campaigner might have felt had the Great Duke
vouchsafed to tell him of his achievements in the Peninsula--how he had
planned the masterly defences of Torres Vedras, or conceived the bold
advance upon Spain--would have been but a weak representation of the
eager enjoyment Beecher experienced when Grog narrated some of his
personal recollections: how he had squared Sir Toby at Manchester;
the way he had won the York Handicap with a dead horse; and the still
prouder day when, by altering the flags at Bolton, he gained twenty-two
thousand pounds on the Great National Steeplechase. Nor was it without
a certain vaingloriousness that Grog would speak of these, as, cigar
in mouth and his hands deep in his breeches pockets, he grunted out, in
broken sentences, the great triumphs of his life.

We began this chapter by saying that Lord Lackington was not an
impassioned letter-writer; and here we are discoursing about Mr. Davis
and his habits, as if these topics could possibly have any relation
to the noble Viscount's ways; and yet they are connected, for it was
precisely to read one of his Lordship's letters to his friend that
Beecher was now Grog's guest, seated opposite to him at the fire, in a
very humble room of a very humble cottage on the strand of Irish-town.
Grog had sought this retirement after the last settling at Newmarket,
and had been, in popular phrase, "missing" since that event.

"Well, it's a long one, at all events," said Mr. Davis, as he glanced
through his double eyeglass at the letter Beecher handed him,--"so long
that I 'll be sworn it had no enclosure. When a man sends the flimsy, he
spares you the flourish!"

"Right there, Grog. It's all preach and no pay; but read it" And he
lighted his cigar, and puffed away.

"'Lake of Como, Oct 15

"What 's the old cove about up at Como so late in the season?"

"Read it, and you 'll know all," said the other, sententiously.

"'Dear Annesley,--I have been plotting a letter to you these half-dozen
weeks; but what with engagements, the heat, and that insurmountable
desire to defer whatever can by possibility be put off, all my good
intentions have turned out tolerably like some of your own,--pleasant
memories, and nothing more. Georgina, too, said--'

"Who's Georgina?"

"My sister-in-law."

"What's she like,--you never spoke of her?"

"Oh, nothing particular. She was a Ludworth; they 're a proud set, but
have n't