to induce Miss Lynch to become Martin Kelly’s wife; and I know the parties to it, too; and I also know that an active young fellow like him wouldn’t be paying an agent to get in his rents; and I thought, if Mr Lynch was willing to appoint you his agent, as well as his sister’s, it might be worth your while to lend us a hand to settle this affair, without forcing us to stick people into a witness-box whom neither I nor Mr Lynch—­”

“But what the d——­l can I—­”

“Jist hear me out, Mr Moylan; you see, if they once knew—­the Kellys I mane—­that you wouldn’t lend a hand to this piece of iniquity—­”

“Which piece of iniquity, Mr Daly?—­for I’m entirely bothered.”

“Ah, now, Mr Moylan, none of your fun:  this piece of iniquity of theirs, I say; for I can call it no less.  If they once knew that you wouldn’t help ’em, they’d be obliged to drop it all; the matter’d never have to go into court at all, and you’d jist step into the agency fair and aisy; and, into the bargain, you’d do nothing but an honest man’s work.”

The old man broke down, and consented to “go agin the Kellys,” as he somewhat ambiguously styled his apostasy, provided the agency was absolutely promised to him; and he went away with the understanding that he was to come on the following day and meet Mr Lynch.

At two o’clock, punctual to the time of his appointment, Moylan was there, and was kept waiting an hour in Daly’s little parlour.  At the end of this time Barry came in, having invigorated his courage and spirits with a couple of glasses of brandy.  Daly had been for some time on the look-out for him, for he wished to say a few words to him in private, and give him his cue before he took him into the room where Moylan was sitting.  This could not well be done in the office, for it was crowded.  It would, I think, astonish a London attorney in respectable practice, to see the manner in which his brethren towards the west of Ireland get through their work.  Daly’s office was open to all the world; the front door of the house, of which he rented the ground floor, was never closed, except at night; nor was the door of the office, which opened immediately into the hail.

During the hour that Moylan was waiting in the parlour, Daly was sitting, with his hat on, upon a high stool, with his feet resting on a small counter which ran across the room, smoking a pipe:  a boy, about seventeen years of age, Daly’s clerk, was filling up numbers of those abominable formulas of legal persecution in which attorneys deal, and was plying his trade as steadily as though no February blasts were blowing in on him through the open door, no sounds of loud and boisterous conversation were rattling in his ears.  The dashing manager of one of the branch banks in the town was sitting close to the little stove, and raking out the turf ashes with the office rule, while describing a drinking-bout that had taken place on the previous Sunday at Blake’s of Blakemount;