my listener had begun to show a most lamentable want
of sympathy for myself and my sufferings; so I was driven to try what
a little patriotism might do in arousing his feelings; and I was right.
Some of Cullnane's connections had been Terrys,--or Blackfeet, or
White-feet, or some one or other of these pleasant fraternities who
study ball-practice, with a landlord for the bull's-eye. He at once
caught up the spirit of my remarks, and even quoted some eloquent
passages of Mr. O'Connell about the width of our shoulders and the
calves of our legs, and other like personal advantages, incontestably
showing as they do that we never were made to be subject to the Saxon.
It was the law of the land, however, which had his heartiest abhorrence.
This, like nine-tenths of his own class in Ireland, he regarded as a
systematic means of oppression, invented by the rich to give them the
tyrannical dominion over the poor. Nor is the belief to be wondered at,
considering how cognizant the peasant often is of all the schemes and
wiles by which a conviction is compassed; nay, the very adroitness of a
legal defence in criminal cases,--the feints, the quips, the
stratagems,--instead of suggesting admiration for those barriers by
which the life and liberty of a subject are protected, only engendered a
stronger conviction of the roguish character of that ordeal where craft
and subtlety could do so much.

It was at the close of a very long diatribe over Irish law and lawyers
that Cullinane, whose confidence increased each moment, said, with a
sigh, "Ay! they wor n't so 'cute in ould times, when my poor grandfather
was tried, as they are now, or may be he'd have had betther luck."

"What happened to him?" said I.

"He was hanged, acushla!" said he, knocking the ashes out of his pipe as
leisurely as might be, and then mumbling a scrap of a prayer below his
breath.

"For what?" asked I, in some agitation; but he didn't hear me, being
sunk in his own reflections, so that I was forced to repeat my question.

"Ye never heerd of one Mr. Shinane, of the Grove?" said he, after a
pause. "Of coorse ye did n't,--'tis many years ago now; but he was well
known oncet, and owned a great part of Ennistymore, and a hard man he
was. But no matter for that,--he was a strong, full man, with rosy
cheeks and stout built, and sorra a lease in the country had not his
life in it!--a thing he liked well, for he used to say, 't 'll be the
ruin of ye all, if any one s