ikely, may-be. He's the traverser, as I told you before, and that's
not being a prisoner. If he were a prisoner, how did he manage to tell
us all what he did at the Hall yesterday?"

"Av' he's not a prisoner, he's the next-door to it; it's not of his own
free will and pleasure he'd come here to listen to all the lies them
thundhering Saxon ruffians choose to say about him."

"And why not? Why wouldn't he come here and vindicate himself? When you
hear Sheil by and by, you'll see then whether they think themselves
likely to be prisoners! No--no; they never will be, av' there's a ghost
of a conscience left in one of them Protesthant raps, that they've
picked so carefully out of all Dublin to make jurors of. They can't
convict 'em! I heard Ford, the night before last, offer four to one
that they didn't find the lot guilty; and he knows what he's about, and
isn't the man to thrust a Protestant half as far as he'd see him."

"Isn't Tom Steele a Protesthant himself, John?"

"Well, I believe he is. So's Gray, and more of 'em too; but there's a
difference between them and the downright murdhering Tory set. Poor Tom
doesn't throuble the Church much; but you'll be all for Protesthants
now, Martin, when you've your new brother-in-law. Barry used to be one
of your raal out-and-outers!"

"It's little, I'm thinking, I and Barry'll be having to do together,
unless it be about the brads; and the law about them now, thank God,
makes no differ for Roman and Protesthant. Anty's as good a Catholic
as ever breathed, and so was her mother before her; and when she's Mrs
Kelly, as I mane to make her, Master Barry may shell out the cash and
go to heaven his own way for me."

"It ain't the family then, you're fond of, Martin! And I wondher at
that, considering how old Sim loved us all."

"Niver mind Sim, John! he's dead and gone; and av' he niver did a good
deed before, he did one when he didn't lave all his cash to that
precious son of his, Barry Lynch."

"You're prepared for squalls with Barry, I suppose?"

"He'll have all the squalling on his own side, I'm thinking, John. I
don't mane to squall, for one. I don't see why I need, with L400 a-year
in my pocket, and a good wife to the fore."

"The L400 a-year's good enough, av' you touch it, certainly," said the
man of law, thinking of his own insufficient guinea a-week, "and you
must look to have some throuble yet afore you do that. But as to the
wife--why, the less said the better--eh