“I’ll try and explain to you, Mr Lynch, what you’ll get by it.  As far as I can understand, your father left about eight hundred a-year between the two—­that’s you and your sisther; and then there’s the house and furniture.  Nothing on earth can keep her out of her property, or prevent her from marrying whom she plases.  Martin Kelly, who is an honest fellow, though sharp enough, has set his eye on her, and before many weeks you’ll find he’ll make her his wife.  Undher these circumstances, wouldn’t he be the best tenant you could find for Dunmore?  You’re not fond of the place, and will be still less so when he’s your brother-in-law.  Lave it altogether, Mr Lynch; give him a laise of the whole concern, and if you’ll do that now at once, take my word for it you’ll get more out of Dunmore than iver you will by staying here, and fighting the matther out.”

“But about the debts, Daly?”

“Why, I suppose the fact is, the debts are all your own, eh?”

“Well—­suppose they are?”

“Exactly so:  personal debts of your own.  Why, when you’ve made some final arrangement about the property, you must make some other arrangement with your creditors.  But that’s quite a separate affair; you don’t expect Martin Kelly to pay your debts, I suppose?”

“But I might get a sum of money for the good-will, mightn’t I?”

“I don’t think Martin’s able to put a large sum down.  I’ll tell you what I think you might ask; and what I think he would give, to get your good-will and consent to the match, and to prevent any further difficulty.  I think he’d become your tenant, for the whole of your share, at a rent of five-hundred a year; and maybe he’d give you three hundred pounds for the furniture and stock, and things about the place.  If so, you should give him a laise of three lives.”

There was a good deal in this proposition that was pleasing to Barry’s mind:  five hundred a-year without any trouble in collecting it; the power of living abroad in the unrestrained indulgence of hotels and billiard rooms; the probable chance of being able to retain his income and bilk his creditors; the prospect of shaking off from himself the consequences of a connection with the Kellys, and being for ever rid of Dunmore encumbrances.  These things all opened before his eyes a vista of future, idle, uncontrolled enjoyment, just suited to his taste, and strongly tempted him at once to close with Daly’s offer.  But still, he could hardly bring himself to consent to be vanquished by his own sister; it was wormwood to him to think that after all she should be left to the undisturbed enjoyment of her father’s legacy.  He had been brow-beaten by the widow, insulted by young Kelly, cowed and silenced by the attorney whom he had intended to patronise and convert into a creature of his own:  he could however have borne and put up with all this, if he could only have got his will of his sister; but to give up to her, who had been his slave all his life—­to