“There's Höchst, on the Lahn, a pleasant spot, eighteen miles from this.”
“Höchst be it; but, mark me, no more of last night's doings.”
“I pledge my word,” said Paul, solemnly. “Need I say, it is as good as my bond?”
“About the same, I suspect; but I 'll give you mine too,” said Davis, with a fierce energy. “If by any low dissipation or indiscretion of yours you thwart the plans I am engaged in, I 'll leave you to starve out the rest of your life here.”
“'So swear we all as liegemen true, So swear to live and die!'” cried out Paul, with a most theatrical air in voice and gesture.
“You know a little of everything, I fancy,” said Davis, in a more good-humored tone. “What do you know of law?”
“Of law?” said Paul, as he helped himself to a dish of smoking cutlets,—“if it be the law of debtor and creditor, false arrest, forcible possession, battery, or fraudulent bankruptcy, I am indifferently well skilled. Nor am I ignorant in divorce cases, separate maintenance, and right of guardianship. Equity, I should say, is my weak point.”
“I believe you,” said Davis, with a grin, for he but imperfectly understood the speech. “But it is of another kind of law I 'm speaking. What do you know about disputed title to a peerage? Have you any experience in such cases?”
“Yes; I have ransacked registries, rummaged out gravestones in my time. I very nearly burned my fingers, too, with a baptismal certificate that turned out to be—what shall I call it?—unauthentic!”
“You forged it!” said Grog, gruffly.