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; he had a cigar in his mouth, and was
searching for a piece of well-kindled turf, wherewith to light it. A
little fat oily shopkeeper in the town, who called himself a woollen
merchant, was standing with the raised leaf of the counter in his
hand, roar