“Why, Fenton, I did not think that you looked so deeply into the state and condition of the country.  Have you no good specimens of character in or about the town itself?”

“Unquestionably, sir.  Look out now from this window,” he proceeded, and he went to it as he spoke, accompanied by the stranger; “do you see,” he added, “that unostentatious shop, with the name of James Trimble over the door?”

“Certainly,” replied the other, “I see it most distinctly.”

“Well, sir, in that shop lives a man who is ten times a greater benefactor to this town and neighborhood than is the honorable and right reverend the lordly prelate, whose silent and untenanted palace stands immediately behind us.  In every position in which you find him, this admirable but unassuming man is always the friend of the poor.  When an industrious family, who find that they cannot wring independence, by hard and honest labor, out of the farms or other little tenements which they hold, have resolved to seek it in a more prosperous country, America, the first man to whom they apply, if deficient in means to accomplish their purpose, is James Trimble.  In him they find a friend, if he knows, as he usually does, that they have passed through life with a character of worth and hereditary integrity.  If they want a portion of their outfit, and possess not means to procure it, in kind-hearted James Trimble they are certain to find a friend, who will supply their necessities upon the strength of their bare promise to repay him.  Honor,—­then—­honor, sir, I say again, to the unexampled faith, truth, and high principle of the industrious Irish peasant, who, in no instance, even although the broad Atlantic has been placed between them, has been known to defraud James Trimble of a single shilling.  In all parochial and public meetings—­in every position where his influence can be used—­he is uniformly the friend of the poor, whilst his high but unassuming sense of honor, his successful industry, and his firm, unshrinking independence, make him equally appreciated and respected by the rich and poor.  In fact, it is such men as this who are the most unostentatious but practical benefactors to the lower and middle classes.”

He had proceeded thus far, when a carriage-and-four came dashing up the street, and stopped at the very shop which belonged to the subject of Fenton’s eulogium.  Both went to the window at the same moment, and looked out.

“Pray, whose carriage is that.” asked the stranger, fastening his eyes, with a look of intense scrutiny, upon Fenton’s face.

“That, sir,” he replied, “is the carriage of Sir Thomas Gourlay.”

As he spoke, the door of it was opened, and a lady of surpassing elegance and beauty stepped out of it, and entered the shop of the benevolent James Trimble.

“Pray, who is that charming girl?” asked the stranger again.

To this interrogatory, however, he received no reply.  Poor Fenton tottered over to a chair, became pale as death, and trembled with such violence that he was incapable, for the time, of uttering a single word.