Davenport Dunn Author:Charles Lever Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A NOTE FROM DAVIS. Am I asking too much of my esteemed reader, if I beg of him to remember where and how I last left the Honorable Annesley Be... more »echer? for it is to that hopeful individual and his fortunes I am now about to return. If it be wearisome to the reader to have his attention suddenly drawn from the topic before him, and his interest solicited for those he has well-nigh forgotten, let me add that it is almost as bad for the writer, who is obliged to hasten hither and thither, and, like a huntsman with a straggling pack, to urge on the tardy, correct the loiterer, and repress the eager. AVhen we parted with Annesley Beecher, he was in sore trouble and anxiety of mind; a conviction was on him that he was "squared," "nobbled," "crossed," "potted," or something to the like intent and with a like euphonious designation. "The Count and Spicer were conspiring to put him in a hole! " As if any " hole" could be as dark, as hopeless, and as deep as the dreary pitfall of his own helpless nature! His only resource seemed flight; to break cover at once and run for it, appeared the solitary solution of the difficulty. There was many a spot in the map of Europe which offered a sanctuary against Grog Davis. But what if Grog were to set the law in motion, where should he seek refuge then? Some one had once mentioned to him a country with which no treaty connected us with regard to criminals. It began, if he remembered aright, with an S-, was it Sardinia or Sweden or Spain or Sicily or Switzerland? It was surely one of them, but which? "What a mass of rubbish, to be sure," thought he, " they crammedme with at Rugby, but not one solitary particle of what one could cull useful learning! See now, for instance, what benefit a bit of geography might be to me!" And he r...« less