d the pious old gentleman, and, when it was over, so was he!"

"Dead!" said I.

"As a door-nail! Well, my father was dutiful; he kept the suit moving
till he got called to the Bar! Once there, he gave it all his spare
moments; and when there was nothing doing in the Common Pleas or King's
Bench, he was sure to come down with a new bill, or a declaration,
before the Master, or a writ of error, or a point of law for a jury,
till at last, when no case was ready to come on, the sitting judge would
call out, 'Let us hear O'Grady/ in appeal, or in error, or whatever it
was. But, to make my story short, my father became a first-rate lawyer,
by the practice of his own suit--rose to a silk-gown--was made solicitor
and attorney-general--afterwards, chief-justice----"

"And the suit?"

"Oh! the suit survived him, and became my property; but, somehow, I
didn't succeed in the management quite as well as my father; and I found
that my estate cost me somewhere about fifteen hundred a year--not to
mention more oaths than fifty years of purgatory could pay off. This was
a high premium to pay for figuring every term on the list of trials, so
I raised a thousand pounds on my commission, gave it to Nick M'Namara,
to take the property off my hands, and as my father's last injunction
was, 'Never rest till you sleep in Mount O'Grady,'--why, I just baptised
my present abode by that name, and here I live with the easy conscience
of a dutiful and affectionate child that took the shortest and speediest
way of fulfilling his father's testament."

"By Jove! a most singular narrative. I shouldn't like to have parted
with the old place, however."

"Faith, I don't know! I never was much there. It was a rackety,
tumble-down old concern, with rattling windows, rooks, and rats, pretty
much like this; and, what between my duns and Corny Delany, I very often
think I am back there again. There wasn't as good a room as this in the
whole house, not to speak of the pictures. Isn't that likeness of Darcy
capital? You saw him last night. He sat next Curran. Come, I've no
curacoa to offer you, but try this usquebaugh."

"By-the-by, that Corny is a strange character. I rather think, if I were
you, I should have let him go with the property."

"Let him go! Egad, that's not so easy as you think. Nothing but death
will ever part us."

"I really cannot comprehend how you endure him; he'd drive me mad."

"Well, he very often pushes me a little hard or so; an