“I 'm out of _your_ debt, Master Grog,” said he, with a pleasant laugh to himself; “catch me if you can running up another score in _your_ books. Wait till you see me slipping my neck into a noose held by _your_ fingers. You made me feel the curb pretty sharp for many a long day, and might still, if you had n't taken off the bridle with your own hands; but I 'm free now, and won't I show you a fair pair of heels! Who could blame me, I 'd like to know? When a fellow gets out of jail, does he take lodgings next door to the prison? _I_ never asked him to burn those bills. It was all his own doing. I conclude that a fellow as shrewd as he knew what he was about. Mayhap he said to himself, 'Beecher's the downiest cove going. It will be a deuced sight better to have him as my friend and pal than to send him to break stones in Australia. I can stand to win a good thing on him, and why should I send him over seas just out of spite? I'll come the grand magnanimous dodge over him,--destroy the papers before his face, and say, “Now, old fellow, what do you say to that for a touch of generosity?”' “'Well, I'll tell you what I say, Master Davis,'” said he, drawing himself up, and speaking boldly out. “'I say that you're a regular trump, and no mistake; but you 're not the sharp fellow I took you for. No, no, old gent, you 're no match for A. B.! He's been running in bandages all this time past; and now that his back sinews are all right, you'll see if he hasn't a turn of speed in him.' And what is more, I 'd say to him, 'Look here, Grog, we've jogged along these ten or twelve years or so without much profit to either of us,--what say you if we dissolve the partnership and let each do a little business on his own account? If I should turn out anything very brilliant, you 'll be proud of me, just as England says she is when a young colony takes a great spring of success, and say, “Ay, he was one of my rearing!”' Of course all dictation, all that bullying intolerance is at an end now, and time it was! Wasn't I well weary of it! wasn't I actually sick of life with it! I couldn't turn to anything, could n't think of anything, with that eternal fear before me, always asking myself, 'Is he going to do it now?' It is very hard to believe it's all over.” And he heaved a deep sigh as though disburdening his heart of its last load of sorrow. “Davis is very wide awake,” continued he; “he 'll soon see how to trim his sails to this new wind; he 'll know that he can't bully, can't terrorize.”