pedigree, it was sufficient for him to find that Hanlon was a very useful, not to say valuable young man, about his house, that he understood everything, and had an eye and hand equally quick and experienced.  The consequence was, that he soon became a favorite with the father, and a kind of sine qua non with the son, into whose rustic gallantries he entered, with a spirit that satisfied the latter of his capacity to serve him in that respect as well as others.  Hanlon, in truth, was just the person for such a master, and for such an establishment as he kept.  Dick o’ the Grange was not a man who, either by birth, education, or position in society, could entertain any pretensions to rank with the gentry of the surrounding country.  It is true he was a magistrate, but then he was a middleman, and as such found himself an interested agent in the operation of one of the worst and most cruel systems that ever cursed either the country or the people.  We of course mean that which suffered a third party to stand between the head landlord, and those who in general occupied the soil.  Of this system, it may be with truth said, that the iniquity lay rather in the principal on which it rested, than in the individual who administered it; because it was next to an impossibility that a man anxious to aggrandize his family—­as almost every man is—­could, in the exercise of the habits which enable him to do so, avoid such a pressure upon those who were under him as amounted to great hardships and injustice.  The system held out so many temptations to iniquity in the management of land, and in the remuneration of labor, that it required an amount of personal virtue and self-denial to resist them, that were scarcely to be expected from any one, so difficult was it to overlook or neglect the opportunities for oppression and fraud which it thus offered.

Old Dick, although bearing the character of being a violent and outrageous man, was, however, one of those persons of whom there will be always somebody found to speak favorably.  Hot and ungovernable in temper, he unquestionably was, and capable of savage and cruel acts; but at the same time his capricious and unsteady impulses rendered him uncertain, whether for good or evil; so much so, indeed, that it was impossible to know when to ask him for a favor; nor was it extraordinary to find him a friend this day to the man whose avowed enemy he proclaimed himself yesterday; and this same point of character was true the other way—–­for whilst certain that you had him for a friend, perhaps you found him hard at work to oppress or over-reach you if he could.  The consequence of this peculiarity was that he had a two-fold reputation in the country.  Some were found to abuse him, and others to mention many acts of generosity and kindness which he had been known to perform under circumstances where they were least to be expected.  This perhaps was one reason why they made so strong an impression upon the people,