s may
sympathize with my taste, I must honestly avow that I looked forward to
it with a most delighted feeling. O'Malley Castle was to be the centre
of operations, and filled with my uncle's supporters; while I, a mere
stripling, and usually treated as a boy, was to be intrusted with an
important mission, and sent off to canvass a distant relation, with whom
my uncle was not upon terms, and who might possibly be approachable by a
younger branch of the family, with whom he had never any collision.

CHAPTER III.

MR. BLAKE.

Nothing but the exigency of the case could ever have persuaded my uncle to
stoop to the humiliation of canvassing the individual to whom I was now
about to proceed as envoy-extraordinary, with full powers to make any or
every _amende_, provided only his interest and that of his followers should
be thereby secured to the O'Malley cause. The evening before I set out was
devoted to giving me all the necessary instructions how I was to proceed,
and what difficulties I was to avoid.

"Say your uncle's in high feather with the government party," said Sir
Harry, "and that he only votes against them as a _ruse de guerre_, as the
French call it."

"Insist upon it that I am sure of the election without him; but that for
family reasons he should not stand aloof from me; that people are talking
of it in the country."

"And drop a hint," said Considine, "that O'Malley is greatly improved in
his shooting."

"And don't get drunk too early in the evening, for Phil Blake has beautiful
claret," said another.

"And be sure you don't make love to the red-headed girls," added a third;
"he has four of them, each more sinfully ugly than the other."

"You'll be playing whist, too," said Boyle; "and never mind losing a few
pounds. Mrs. B., long life to her, has a playful way of turning the king."

"Charley will do it all well," said my uncle; "leave him alone. And now let
us have in the supper."

It was only on the following morning, as the tandem came round to the door,
that I began to feel the importance of my mission, and certain misgivings
came over me as to my ability to fulfil it. Mr. Blake and his family,
though estranged from my uncle for several years past, had been always most
kind and good-natured to me; and although I could not, with propriety, have
cultivated any close intimacy with them, I had every reason to suppose that
they entertained towards me nothing but sentiments of good-will. The h