with
me,--that's what I am. And now for the noble Viscount." And he ran
his eyes over the letter without reading aloud. "All this here is only
saying what sums he has paid for you, what terrible embarrassment your
debts have caused him. Lord love him! it's no new thing to hear of in
this life that paying money is no pleasure. And then it finishes, as
all the stories usually do, by his swearing he won't do it any more. 'I
think,' he says, 'you might come round by a fortunate hit in marriage;
but somehow you blundered in every case that I pointed out to you--'"

"That's too bad!" cried Beecher, angrily. "The only thing he ever 'put
me on' was an iron-master's widow at Barnstable, and I found that the
whole concern was under a contract to furnish rails for a Peruvian line
at two pounds ten a ton under the market price of iron."

"It was _I_ discovered that!" broke in Grog, proudly.

"So it was, old fellow; and you got me off the match without paying
forfeit."

"Well, this here looks better," continued Grog, reading.

"Young and handsome, one of two daughters of an old Irish provision
merchant come abroad for the first time in their life, and consequently
new to everything. The name's O'Reilly, of Mary's Abbey, so that you
can have no difficulty in accurately learning all about him in Dublin.
Knowing that these things are snapped up immediately in the cities, I
have induced O'R. to take a villa on the lake here for the present,
so that if your inquiries turn out satisfactorily, you can come out at
once, and we 'll find the birds where I have landed them.'"

"That's business-like,--that's well and sensibly put," said Davis, in a
voice of no counterfeited admiration.

He read on: "'O'R. talks of forty thousand to each, but, with the
prospect of connecting himself with people of station, might possibly
come down more handsomely in one case, particularly when brought to see
that the other girl's prospects will be proportionately bettered by this
alliance; at all events, no time is to be lost in the matter, and you
can draw on me, at two months, for fifty pounds, which will carry you
out here, and where, if you should not find me, you will have letters
of presentation to the O'R.'s. It is not a case requiring either time
or money,--though it may call for more energy and determination than you
are in the habit of exercising. At the proper moment I shall be ready to
contribute all in my power.'

"What does that mean?" sai