l, as he slowly
puffed out a long volume of smoke, but never moved from his seat.

"My question having the precedence, sir, it will be, perhaps, more
regular to answer it first," said Ogden, with a slow pertinacity.

[Illustration: 242]

"Well, I ain't quite sure o' that, stranger." drawled out the other.
"Mine was a sort of an amendment, and so might be put before the
original motion."

The remark chimed in well with the humor of one never indisposed to
word-fencing, and so he deferred to the suggestion, told his name and
his object in coming. "And now, sir," added he, "I hope not to be deemed
indiscreet in asking an equal candor from you."

"You ain't a doctor?" asked Quackinboss.

"No, sir; not a physician, at least."

"That's a pity," said Quackinboss, slowly, as he brushed the ashes
off his cigar. "Help yourself, stranger; that's claret, t'other's the
country wine, and this is cognac,--all three bad o' their kind; but, as
they say here to everything, 'Come si fa, eh? Come si fa!'"

"It is not from any disparagement of your hospitality, sir," said
Ogden, somewhat pompously, "that I am forced to recall you to my first
question."

"Come si fa!" repeated Quackinboss, still ruminating over the philosophy
of that expression, one of the very few he had ever succeeded in
committing to memory.

"Am I to conclude, sir, that you decline giving me the information I
ask?"

"I ain't in a witness-box, stranger. I 'm a-sittin' at my own fireside.
I 'm a-smokin' my Virginian, where I 've a right to, and if _you_ choose
to come in neighborly-like, and take a liquor with me, we 'll talk it
over, whatever it is; but if you think to come Holy Office and the
Inquisition over Shaver Quackinboss, you 've caught the wrong squirrel
by the tail, Britisher, you have!"

"I must say, sir, you have put a most forced and unfair construction
upon a very simple circumstance. I asked you if the Marquis of Agincourt
resided here?"

"And so you ain't a doctor?" said Quackinboss, pensively.

"No, sir; I have already told you as much."

"Bred to the law, belike?"

"I _have_ studied, sir, but not practised as a lawyer."

"Well, now, I expected you was!" said Quackinboss, with an air of
self-satisfaction. "You chaps betray yourselves sooner than any other
class in all creation; as Flay Harris says: 'A lawyer is a fellow won't
drink out of the bung-hole, but must always be for tapping the cask for
himself.' You ain't long in these pa