hould escape him; now, he might be remarked
seated in a niche between the pillars, explaining some knotty difficulty
to a western client, whose flushed cheek and flashing eye too plainly
indicated his impatience of legal strategy, and how much more pleased he
would feel to redress his wrongs in his own fashion; now brow-beating,
now cajoling, now encouraging, now condoling, he edged his way through
the bewigged and dusty throng, not stopping to reply to the hundred
salutations he met with, save by a knowing wink, which was the only
civility he did not put down at three-and-fourpence. If his knowledge of
law was little, his knowledge of human nature--at least of such of it
as Ireland exhibits--was great; and no case of any importance could
come before a jury, where Paul's advice and opinion were not deemed of
considerable importance. No man better knew all the wiles and twists,
all the dark nooks and recesses of Irish character. No man more quickly
could ferret out a hoarded secret; no one so soon detect an attempted
imposition. His was the secret _police_ of law: he read a witness as he
would a deed, and detected a flaw in him to the full as easily.

As he sat near the leading counsel in a cause, he seemed a kind of
middle term between the lawyer and the jury. Marking by some slight
but significant gesture every point of the former, to the latter he
impressed upon their minds every favourable feature of his client's
cause; and twelve deaf men might have followed the pleadings in a cause
through the agency of Paul's gesticulations. The consequence of these
varied gifts was, business flowed in upon him from every side, and few
members of the bar were in the receipt of one-half his income.

Scarcely, however, did the courts rise, when Paul, shaking from his
shoulders the learned dust of the Exchequer, would dive into a small
apartment which, in an obscure house in Mass-lane, he dignified by the
name of his study. Short and few as were his moments of seclusion, they
sufficed to effect in his entire man a complete and total change. The
shrewd little attorney, that went in with a _nisi prius_ grin, came out
a round, pleasant-looking fellow, with a green coat of jockey cut, a
buff waistcoat, white cords, and tops; his hat set jauntily on one side,
his spotted neckcloth knotted in bang-up mode,--in fact, his figure the
_beau ideal_ of a west-country squire taking a canter among his covers
before the opening of the hunting.

H