“Sit quiet!” replied Conyers, staring half angrily at him; and then as quickly perceiving that no impertinence had been intended, which the other's changing color and evident confusion attested, he begged him to take a chair and fill his glass. “That next you is some sort of Rhine wine: this is sherry; and here is the very best claret I ever tasted.” “Well, I 'll take that,” said Tom, who, accepting the recommendation amidst luxuries all new and strange to him, proceeded to fill his glass, but so tremblingly that he spilled the wine all about the table, and then hurriedly wiped it up with his handkerchief. Conyers did his utmost to set his guest at his ease. He passed his cigar-case across the table, and led him on, as well as he might, to talk. But Tom was awestruck, not alone by the splendors around him, but by the condescension of his host; and he could not divest himself of the notion that he must have been mistaken for somebody else, to whom all these blandishments might be rightfully due. “Are you fond of shooting?” asked Conyers, trying to engage a conversation. “Yes,” was the curt reply. “There must be good sport hereabouts, I should say. Is the game well preserved?” “Too well for such as me. I never get a shot without the risk of a jail, and it would be cheaper for me to kill a cow than a woodcock!” There was a stern gravity in the way he said this that made it irresistibly comic, and Conyers laughed out in spite of himself. “Have n't you a game license?” asked he. “Haven't I a coach-and-six? Where would I get four pounds seven and ten to pay for it?” The appeal was awkward, and for a moment Conyers was silent At last he said, “You fish, I suppose?” “Yes; I kill a salmon whenever I get a quiet spot that nobody sees me, and I draw the river now and then with a net at night.” “That's poaching, I take it.” “It 's not the worse for that!” said Tom, whose pluck was by this time considerably assisted by the claret. “Well, it's an unfair way, at all events, and destroys real sport” “Real sport is filling your basket.” “No, no; there's no real sport in doing anything that's unfair,--anything that's un----” He stopped short, and swallowed off a glass of wine to cover his confusion. “That's all mighty fine for you, who can not only pay for a license, but you 're just as sure to be invited here, there, and everywhere there's game to be killed. But think of me, that never snaps a cap, never throws a line, but he knows it's worse than robbing a hen-roost, and often, maybe, just as fond of it as yourself!”