on of his
father with that held by his grandfather, he resented the downfall as
the act of a dominant faction, eager to outrage the old race and the old
religion of Ireland. Kate took a very different view of their condition.
She clung, indeed, to the notion of their good blood; but as a thing
that might assuage many of the pangs of adverse fortune, not increase or
embitter them; and 'if we are ever to emerge,' thought she, 'from this
poor state, we shall meet our class without any of the shame of a mushroom
origin. It will be a restoration, and not a new elevation.' She was a fine,
handsome, fearless girl, whom many said ought to have been a boy; but this
was rather intended as a covert slight on the narrower nature and peevish
temperament of her brother--another way, indeed, of saying that they should
have exchanged conditions.

The listless indolence of her father's life, and the almost complete
absence from home of her brother, who was pursuing his studies at the
Dublin University, had given over to her charge not only the household, but
no small share of the management of the estate--all, in fact, that an old
land-steward, a certain Peter Gill, would permit her to exercise; for Peter
was a very absolute and despotic Grand-Vizier, and if it had not been that
he could neither read nor write, it would have been utterly impossible to
have wrested from him a particle of power over the property. This happy
defect in his education--happy so far as Kate's rule was concerned--gave
her the one claim she could prefer to any superiority over him, and his
obstinacy could never be effectually overcome, except by confronting him
with a written document or a column of figures. Before these, indeed, he
would stand crestfallen and abashed. Some strange terror seemed to possess
him as to the peril of opposing himself to such inscrutable testimony--a
fear, be it said, he never felt in contesting an oral witness.

Peter had one resource, however, and I am not sure that a similar
stronghold has not secured the power of greater men and in higher
functions. Peter's sway was of so varied and complicated a kind; the duties
he discharged were so various, manifold, and conflicting; the measures
he took with the people, whose destinies were committed to him, were
so thoroughly devised, by reference to the peculiar condition of each
man--what he could do, or bear, or submit to--and not by any sense of
justice; that a sort of government grew up