Anty’s letter was sent off early on the Monday morning—­at least, as early as Barry now ever managed to do anything—­to the attorney at Tuam, with strong injunctions that no time was to be lost in taking further steps, and with a request that Daly would again come out to Dunmore.  This, however, he did not at present think it expedient to do.  So he wrote to Barry, begging him to come into Tuam on the Wednesday, to meet Moylan, whom he, Daly, would, if possible, contrive to see on the intervening day.

“Obstinate puppy!” said Barry to himself—­“if he’d had the least pluck in life he’d have broken the will, or at least made the girl out a lunatic.  But a Connaught lawyer hasn’t half the wit or courage now that he used to have.”  However, he wrote a note to Daly, agreeing to his proposal, and promising to be in Tuam at two o’clock on the Wednesday.

On the following day Daly saw Moylan, and had a long conversation with him.  The old man held out for a long time, expressing much indignation at being supposed capable of joining in any underhand agreement for transferring Miss Lynch’s property to his relatives the Kellys, and declaring that he would make public to every one in Dunmore and Tuam the base manner in which Barry Lynch was treating his sister.  Indeed, Moylan kept to his story so long and so firmly that the young attorney was nearly giving him up; but at last he found his weak side.

“Well, Mr Moylan,” he said, “then I can only say your own conduct is very disinterested;—­and I might even go so far as to say that you appear to me foolishly indifferent to your own concerns.  Here’s the agency of the whole property going a-begging:  the rents, I believe, are about a thousand a-year:  you might be recaving them all by jist a word of your mouth, and that only telling the blessed truth; and here, you’re going to put the whole thing into the hands of young Kelly; throwing up even the half of the business you have got!”

“Who says I’m afther doing any sich thing, Mr Daly?”

“Why, Martin Kelly says so.  Didn’t as many as four or five persons hear him say, down at Dunmore, that divil a one of the tenants’d iver pay a haporth [30] of the November rents to anyone only jist to himself?  There was father Geoghegan heard him, an Doctor Ned Blake.”

     [FOOTNOTE 30:  haporth—­half-penny’s worth]

“Maybe he’ll find his mistake, Mr Daly.”

“Maybe he will, Mr Moylan.  Maybe we’ll put the whole affair into the courts, and have a regular recaver over the property, under the Chancellor.  People, though they’re ever so respectable in their way,—­and I don’t mane to say a word against the Kellys, Mr Moylan, for they were always friends of mine—­but people can’t be allowed to make a dead set at a property like this, and have it all their own way, like the bull in the china-shop.  I know there has been an agreement made, and that, in the eye of the law, is a conspiracy.  I positively know that an agreement has been made