ne especial talent lost for ever to the present
generation--just like stained glass and illuminated manuscripts, and slow
poisons and the like--that were all known years ago--I mean the beautiful
art of addressing the judge before the jury, and not letting them know
you were quizzing them, if ye liked to do that same. Poor Peter Purcell
for that--rest his ashes--he could cheat the devil himself, if he had
need--and maybe he has had before now, Peter is sixteen years dead last
November."

"And what was Peter's peculiar tact in that respect, Mr. Daly?" said I.

"Oh, then I might try for hours to explain it to you in vain; but
I'll just give you an instance that'll show you better than all my
dissertations on the subject, and I was present myself when it happened,
more by token, it was the first time I ever met him on circuit;--"

"I suppose there is scarcely any one here now, except myself, that
remembers the great cause of Mills versus Mulcahy, a widow and others,
that was tried in Ennis, in the year '82. It's no matter if there is
not. Perhaps it may be more agreeable for me, for I can tell my story my
own version, and not be interrupted. Well, that was called the old
record, for they tried it seventeen times. I believe, on my conscience,
it killed old Jones, who was in the Common Pleas; he used to say, if he
put it for trial on the day of judgment, one of the parties would be sure
to lodge an appeal. Be that as it may, the Millses engaged Peter
special, and brought him down with a great retainer, in a chaise and
four, flags flying, and favors in the postillions' hats, and a fiddler on
the roof playing the 'hare in the corn.' The inn was illuminated the
same evening, and Peter made a speech from the windows upon the liberty
of the press and religious freedom all over the globe, and there wasn't a
man in the mob didn't cheer him, which was the more civil, because few of
them knew a word of English, and the others thought he was a play-actor.
But it all went off well, nevertheless, for Peter was a clever fellow;
and although he liked money well, he liked popularity more, and he never
went any where special that he hadn't a public meeting of some kind or
other, either to abolish rents, or suppress parsons, or some such popular
and beneficial scheme, which always made him a great favourite with the
people, and got him plenty of clients. But I am wandering from the
record. Purcell came down, as I said before, speci