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 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