“Inside!” said he, with a jerk of his thumb; and Tony pushed his way into a small room, so crammed with reams of paper that there was barely space to squeeze a passage to a little writing-table next the window. “Well, sir, your pleasure?” said M'Gruder, as Tony came forward. “You forget me, I see; my name is Butler.” “Eh! what! I ought not to forget you,” said he, rising, and grasping the other's hand warmly; “how are you? when did you come up to town? You see the eye is all right; it was a bit swollen for more than a fortnight, though. Hech, sirs! but you have hard knuckles of your own.” It was not easy to apologize for the rough treatment he had inflicted, and Tony blundered and stammered in his attempts to do so; but M'Gruder laughed it all off with perfect good-humor, and said, “My wife will forgive you, too, one of these days, but not just yet; and so we'll go and have a bit o' dinner our two selves down the river. Are you free to-day?” Tony was quite free and ready to go anywhere; and so away they went, at first by river steamer, and then by a cab, and then across some low-lying fields to a small solitary house close to the Thames,--“Shads, chops, and fried-fish house,” over the door, and a pleasant odor of each around the premises. “Ain't we snug here? no tracking a man this far,” said M'Grader, as he squeezed into a bench behind a fixed table in a very small room. “I never heard of the woman that ran her husband to earth down here.” That this same sense of security had a certain value in M'Grader's estimation was evident, for he more than once recurred to the sentiment as they sat at dinner. The tavern was a rare place for “hollands,” as M'Grader said; and they sat over a peculiar brew for which the house was famed, but of which Tony's next day's experiences do not encourage me to give the receipt to my readers. The cigars, too, albeit innocent of duty, might have been better; but all these, like some other pleasures we know of, only were associated with sorrow in the future. Indeed, in the cordial freedom that bound them they thought very little of either. They had grown to be very confidential; and M'Gruder, after inquiring what Tony proposed to himself by way of a livelihood, gave him a brief sketch of his own rise from very humble beginnings to a condition of reasonably fair comfort and sufficiency. “I 'm in rags, ye see, Mr. Butler,” said he, “my father was in rags before me.” “In rags!” cried Tony, looking at the stout sleek broadcloth beside him.