Beecher looked up and tried to speak, but his strength failed him, and his head fell heavily down again on the table.
“There, 'liquor up,' as the Yankees say,” cried Davis, passing the decanter towards him. “You 're a poor chicken-hearted creature, and don't do much honor to your 'order.'”
“You 'll drive me to despair yet,” muttered Beecher, in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
“Not a bit of it, man; there's pluck in despair! You 'll never go that far!”
Beecher grasped his glass convulsively; and as his eyes flashed wildly, he seemed for a moment as if about to hurl it in the other's face. Davis's look, however, appeared to abash him, and with a low, faint sigh he relinquished his hold, while his head fell forward on his bosom.
Davis now drew near the fire, and with a leg on either side of it, smoked away at his ease.
CHAPTER XXVII. A VISIT OF CONDOLENCE
“I think she will see me,” said Davenport Dunn, to the old woman servant who opened the door to him at the Kelletts' cottage, “if you will tell her my name: Mr. Dunn,—Mr. Davenport Dunn.”
“She told me she 'd not see anybody, sir,” was the obdurate reply.