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CHAPTER XI. THE LEGEND OF LUTTRELL AND THE —

Doubtless the fresh free mountain air had its influence, and something, too, lay in the surprise at the goodness of the fare, but Vyner and Grenfell sat at the open door after their dinner in the pleasant frame of mind of those who have dined to their satisfaction, and like to reflect on it.

“I can almost look with complacency on your idea of an Irish property, Vyner, when I think of that mutton,” said Grenfell, as he lazily puffed his cigar, while he lay full stretched on the grass. “With what consummate tact, too, the fellow avoided all attempts at fine cookery, and sent us up those trouts plainly fried.”

“This is the only thing I cannot relish – this vile, semi-sweet and smoky compound. It is detestable!” And he held the whisky to his nose, and laid it down again. “Are we sure that he cannot command something better?”

“Here goes to see,” said Grenfell, starting up. “What a crowning pleasure would a glass of sherry – that Amontillado of yours – be in such a spot.”

“Fetch me out that map you’ll find on my table,” said Vyner, as the other moved away, and he lay half dreamily gazing out at the long valley with its mountain barrier in the distance. It was the thought of space, of a splendid territory princely in extent, that captivated his mind with regard to this purchase. All told him that such acquisitions are seldom profitable, and very often perilous; that whatever changes are to be wrought must be carried out with patience and infinite caution, and that the people – the wild natives, who consider the soil as more than half their own – must be conciliated. But was there ever a man – at least an imaginative, impulsive man – who did not fancy he was the person to deal with such difficulties? That by his tact, and skill, and delicate treatment, the obstacles which had closed the way for others would be removed; that with an instinctive appreciation of the people, of their moods of thought, their passions, and their prejudices, he would discover the road to their hearts, and teach them to trust and confide in him?

It was in a sort of fool’s paradise of this kind that Vyner lay. He was a prince in his own wild mountain territory, his sway undisputed, his rule absolute. He had spread benefits innumerable around him, and the recipients were happy, and, what is more, were grateful. Some terrible crime – agrarian outrage, as newspaper literature has it – had come before the House, and led to a discussion on the question of Irish landlordism, and he imagined himself rising in his place to declare his own experiences – “very different, indeed, from those of the Right Honourable Gentleman who had just sat down.” What a glowing picture of a country he drew; what happiness, what peace, what prosperity. It was Arcadia, with a little more rain and a police force. There was no disturbance, no scarcity, very little sickness, religious differences were unknown, a universal brotherhood bound man to man, and imparted to the success of each all the sentiment of a general triumph. “And where, Sir, will you say, is this happy region – in what favoured country blessed by nature is this Elysium? and my reply is, in the wild and almost trackless mountains of Donegal, amidst scenery whose desolate grandeur almost appals the beholder; where but a few years back the traveller dared not penetrate above a mile or two from the coast, and where in comparison the bush in Newfoundland or the thicket in New Zealand had been safe. It is my proud privilege to declare, Sir, and this I do, not alone before this House, but in face of the country – ”

“That you never saw a prettier face than that,” said Grenfell, leading forward the little girl by the hand, and placing her before him.

“She is pretty; she is downright beautiful,” said Vyner, warmly. “Where did you find this queen of the fairies?”

“At the well yonder, trying to place on her head a pitcher not much smaller than herself. She tells me she is a stranger here, only waiting for her grandfather to come and fetch her away.”

“And where to?” asked Vyner.

“To Glenvallah.” And she pointed in the direction of the mountains.

“And where have you come from now?”

“From Arran – from the island.”

“What took you to the island, child?”

“I was at my aunt’s wake. It was there I got this.” And she lifted one of the beads of her necklace with a conscious pride.

“Amber and gold; they become you admirably.”

The child seemed to feel the praise in her inmost heart. It was a eulogy that took in what she prized most, and she shook back the luxuriant masses of her hair, the better to display the ornaments she wore.

“And it was your aunt left this to you?” asked Grenfell.

“No; but we had everything amongst us. Grandfather took this, and Tom Noonan took that, and Mark Tracey got the other, and this – this was mine.”

“Were you sorry for your aunt?” asked Vyner.

“No, I didn’t care.”

“Not care for your father’s or your mother’s sister?”

“She was my mother’s sister, but we never saw her. She couldn’t come to us, and he wouldn’t let us come to her.”

“He, I suppose, means her husband?”

The child nodded assent.

“And what was the reason of this; was there a family quarrel?”

“No. It was because he was a gentleman.” “Indeed!” broke in Grenfell. “How did you know that?”

“Because he never worked, nor did anything for his living. He could stay all day out on the sea-shore gathering shells, and go home when he pleased to his meals or his bed.”

“And that is being a gentleman?”

“I think it is; and I wish I was a lady.”

“What was this gentleman’s name?”

“John Hamilton Luttrell – Luttrell of Arran we called him.”

“John Luttrell! And was your aunt his wife, child?” asked Vyner, eagerly; “and are you the cousin of Harry Luttrell?”

“Yes; but he would not let me say so; he is as proud as his father.”

“He need not be ashamed of such a cousin, I think,” said Vyner, as he surveyed her; and the child again raised her fingers to her necklace, as though it was there that lay all her claim to admiration.

“Keep her in talk, George, while I make a sketch of her; she is the very brightest thing I ever saw in nature.”

“Tell me the names of all these mountains,” said Grenfell; “but first of all, your own.”

“My name is Kitty; but I like them to call me Katherine – as the priest does.”

“It is statelier to be Katherine,” said Grenfell, gravely.

And she gave a nod of haughty acknowledgment that almost provoked a smile from him.

“That mountain is Caub na D’haoul, the Devil’s Nightcap; whenever he takes it off, there’s a storm at sea; and there’s Kilmacreenon, where the Bradleys was killed; and that’s Strathmore, where the gold mines is.”

“And are there really gold mines there?”

“Ay, if one had leave from the devil to work them; but it was only old Luttrell ever got that, and he paid for it.”

“Tell me the story, child; I never heard it.”

The girl here seated herself on a knoll directly in front of them, and, with a demure air, and some of that assumed importance she had possibly seen adopted by story-tellers, she began, in a tone and with a fluency that showed she was repeating an oft-told tale:

“There was one of the Luttrells once that was very rich, and a great man every way, but he spent all his money trying to be greater than the King, for whatever the King did Luttrell would do twice as grand, and for one great feast the King would give, Luttrell would give two, and he came at last to be ruined entirely; and of all his fine houses and lands, nothing was left to him but a little cabin on Strathmore, where his herd used to live. And there he went and lived as poor as a labourin’ man; indeed, except that he’d maybe catch a few fish or shoot something, he had nothing but potatoes all the year round. Well, one day, as he was wanderin’ about very low and sorrowful, he came to a great cave on the hill-side, with a little well of clear water inside it; and he sat down for sake of the shelter, and began to think over old times, when he had houses, and horses, and fine clothes, and jewels. ‘Who’d ever have thought,’ says he, ‘that it would come to this with me; that I’d be sittin’ upon a rock, with nothing to drink but water?’ And he took some up in the hollow of his hand and tasted it; but when he finished, he saw there was some fine little grains, like dust, in his hand, and they were bright yellow besides, because they were gold.

“‘If I had plenty of you, I’d be happy yet,’ says he, looking at the grains.

“‘And what’s easier in life, Mr. Luttrell?’ says a voice; and he starts and turns round, and there, in a cleft of the rock, was sittin’ a little dark man, with the brightest eyes that ever was seen, smoking a pipe. ‘What’s easier in life,’ says he, ‘Mr. Luttrell?’

“‘How do you know my name?’ says he.

“‘Why wouldn’t I? says the other. ‘Sure it isn’t because one is a little down in the world that he wouldn’t have the right to his own name? I have had some troubles myself,’ says he, ‘but I don’t forget my name, for all that.’

“‘And what may it be, if it’s pleasin’ to you?’ says Luttrell.

“‘Maybe I’ll tell it to you,’ says he, ‘when we’re better acquainted.’

“‘Maybe I could guess it now,’ says Luttrell.

“‘Come over and whisper it, then,’ says he, ‘and I’ll tell you if you’re right.’ And Luttrell did and the other called out, ‘You guessed well; that’s just it!’ “‘Well,’ says Luttrell, ‘there’s many a change come over me, but the strangest of all is to think that here I am, sittin’ up and talking to the – ’ The other held up his hand to warn him not to say it, and he went on: ‘And I’m no more afeard of him than if he was an old friend.’

“‘And why would you, Mr. Luttrell? – and why wouldn’t you think him an old friend? Can you remember one pleasant day in all your life that I wasn’t with you some part of it?’”

“Give up that drawing, Vyner, and listen to this,” said Grenfell. “I’ll make her begin it again for you.”

“I am listening. I’ve heard every word of it,” said Vyner. “Go on, dear.”

“‘I know what you mean well enough,’ says Luttrell. ‘I know the sort of bargain you make, but what would be the good of all my riches to me when I’d lose my soule?’

“‘Isn’t it much trouble you take about your soule, Mr. Luttrell?’ says he. ‘Doesn’t it keep you awake at night, thinking how you’re to save it? Ain’t you always correctin’ and chastisin’ yourself for the good of your soule, not lettin’ yourself drink this or eat that, and warnin’ you, besides, about many a thing I won’t speak of, eh? Tell me that.’

“‘There’s something in what you say, no doubt of it,’ says Luttrell; ‘but, after all,’ says he, with a wink, ‘I’m not going to give it up as a bad job, for all that.’

“‘And who asks you?’ says the other. ‘Do you think that a soule more or less signifies to me? It don’t: I’ve lashins and lavins of them.’

“‘Maybe you have,’ says Luttrell.

“‘Have you any doubt of it, Mr. Luttrell?’ says he. ‘Will you just mention the name of any one of your friends or family that I can’t give you some particulars of?’

“‘I’d rather you’d not talk that way,’ says Luttrell; ‘it makes me feel unpleasant.’

“‘I’m sure,’ says the other, ‘nobody ever said I wasn’t polite, or that I ever talked of what was not pleasin’ to the company.’

“‘Well,’ says Luttrell, ‘supposin’ that I wanted to be rich, and supposin’ that I wouldn’t agree to anything that would injure my soule, and supposin’ that there was, maybe, something that you’d like me to do, and that wouldn’t hurt me for doin’ it, what would that be?’

“‘If you always was as cute about a bargain, Mr. Luttrell,’ says the other, ‘you’d not be the poor man you are to-day.’

“‘That’s true, perhaps,’ says he; ‘but, you see, the fellows I made them with wasn’t as cute as the – ’

“‘Don’t,’ says the other, holding up his hand to stop him; ‘it’s never polite. I told you I didn’t want your soul, for I’m never impatient about anything; all I want is to give you a good lesson – something that your family will be long the better of – and you want it much, for you have, all of you, one great sin.’ “‘We’re fond of drink?’ says Luttrell. “‘No,’ says he; ‘I don’t mean that.’ “‘It’s gamblin’?’ “‘Nor that.’

“‘It’s a likin’ for the ladies?’ says Luttrell, slyly. “‘I’ve nothing to say against that, for they’re always well disposed to me,’ says he.

“‘If it’s eatin’, or spendin’ money, or goin’ in debt, or cursin’ or swearin’, or being fond of fightin’ – ‘’

“‘It is not,’ says he; ‘them is all natural. It’s your pride,’ says he – ‘your upsettin’ family pride, that won’t let you do this, or say that. There’s what’s destroyin’ you.’

“‘It’s pretty well out of me now,’ says Luttrell, with a sigh. “‘It is not,’ says the other. ‘If you had a good dinner of beef, and a tumbler of strong punch in you, you’d be as impudent this minute as ever you were.’

“‘Maybe you’re right,’ says Luttrell.

“‘I know I am, Mr. Luttrell. You’re not the first of your family I was intimate with. You’re an ould stock, and I know ye well.’ “‘And how are we to be cured?’ says Luttrell. “‘Easy enough,’ says he. ‘When three generations of ye marry peasants, it will take the pride out of your bones, and you’ll behave like other people.’

“‘We couldn’t do it,’ says Luttrell. “‘Try,’ says the other. “‘Impossible!’

“‘So you’d say about livin’ on potatoes, and drinkin’ well water.’ “‘That’s true,’ says Luttrell.

“‘So you’d say about ragged clothes and no shoes to your feet.’” Luttrell nodded.

“‘So you’d say about settin’ in a cave and talking over family matters to – to a stranger,’ says he, with a laugh.

“‘I believe there’s something in it,’ said Luttrell; ‘but sure some of us might like to turn bachelors.’

“‘Let them, and welcome,’ says he. ‘I don’t want them to do it one after the other. I’m in no hurry. Take a hundred years – take two, if you like, for it.’

“‘Done,’ says Lnttrell. ‘When a man shows a fair spirit, I’ll always meet him in the same. Give me your hand; it’s a bargain.’

“‘I hurt my thumb,’ says he; ‘but take my tail, ‘twill do all the same.’ And though Mr. Luttrell didn’t like it, he shook it stoutly, and only let it go when it began to burn his fingers. And from that day he was rich, even till he died; but after his death nobody ever knew where to find the gold, nor ever will till the devil tells them.”

“And did his family keep the bargain; did they marry the peasants?” asked Grenfell.

“Two of them. One before, John Lnttrell of Arran; and another must do it, and soon too, for they say the two hundred years is near out now.”

“And is it said that the remedy succeeded?” asked Vyner; “are the Luttrells cured of their family pride?”

“They can’t be till the third marriage takes place; indeed, my grandfather says they’ll be worse than ever just before they’re cured; ‘for,’ says he, ‘every one that makes a bargain with the devil thinks he has the best of it.’”

“And that, I suspect, is a mistake, Katherine,” said Vyner.

She threw down her eyes, and seemed lost in thought, making no reply whatever to his remark.

“I’d have had no dealings with him at all,” said Vyner.

“You are rich, and you don’t need him,” said she, almost fiercely, as though his words had conveyed a sneer.

“That’s just it, Kitty,” said Grenfell; “or if he did want him it would be for something different from money.”

She gave a saucy toss of her head, as though to show she agreed with him, and turned to the table where Vyner was at work with his chalks.

“That’s me,” said she, gravely.

“I like your own face better,” said Vyner.

“So would that little fellow with the pipe that you were telling us of,” said Grenfell.

“Let him say so,” said she, with a ringing laugh; and she bounded from the spot, and skipping from crag to crag flew down the rock, and hurried down the little path at speed.

“There’s a man coming up the road; don’t you see him waving his hat?”

“It’s an old man,” said Vyner, as he looked through his telescope. “I snppose her grandfather.”

CHAPTER XII. THE WALK IN THE MOUNTAINS

When Vyner went to sleep that night, it was to dream of all that the last few days had presented before him. The wild and rocky Arran, with its ruined Abbey and its lonely occupant; the bright-eyed but over-thoughtful-looking boy, with all the freshness of childhood and all the contemplative temperament of a man; then the iron-bound shore and the semi-savage natives; and last of all the mountain region where he then was, with that fairy figure more deeply impressed than he had drawn her, and whom he now fancied to be tripping lightly before him up the rocky sides of Strathmore.

As he opened his eyes, the view that met them startled him. It was one of those vast stretches of landscape which painters cannot convey. They are too wide, too boundless for picture. The plain which lay outstretched before him, rising and falling like a vast prairie, was unmarked by habitation – not a hovel, not a hut to be seen. Vast groups of rocks stood out here and there abruptly, grotesque and strange in outline, as though giants had been petrified in the act of some great conflict, the stunted trees that crowned the summits serving as feathers on the helmets. A great amphitheatre of mountain girded the plain, save at one spot, the Gap of Glenvallah, through which, as his map told him, his road on that morning lay.

His object was to see with his own eyes the so much vaunted scenery of this region, to visit the lonely spot, and talk himself with its wild natives; he doubted, indeed, if both the solemnity and the savagery had not been exaggerated. To acquire the property was, after all, only one of those caprices which rich men can afford themselves. They can buy some rare and costly relic – some curious manuscript, some singular specimen of a contested species, a shell, a stone, a fragment of sculptured marble – to show which once or twice to some critical eye is all its value; why not then possess in nature what, had it been reduced to art, and signed Poussin or Salvator, would have been priceless? It was thus he reasoned: “If this place be but what they have described it, I shall own a landscape that all the galleries of Europe cannot rival. A landscape, too, whose varying effects of sun and shadow, of daybreak and twilight, shall be endless. The greatest of all painters, the sun, shall throw over the scene his own lights, and the storm shall wash the canvas and bring out afresh all the most lovely tints of colour.”

Grenfell had promised him overnight to be up and stirring by an early hour, but when called he refused to rise; he had his lazy fit on him, he said; he might have called it rather a malady than a paroxysm, for it was chronic. He declared that the view from the rock before the door fully satisfied him; he was no glutton about scenery; a little did for him, and here was a feast. “Besides,” said he, “I have been reading those atrocious magazines all night, and I mean to devote my day to some rebel colloquies with my host.”

Perhaps, after all, Vyner was scarcely sorry to set out alone; Gren-fell’s companionship was of so essentially worldly a character, his qualities were best exercised when they discussed the men, the things, and the topics of his day: such a man saw in the wild sublimity of a mountain scene little else than its desolation, and Vyner bethought him how often this town-bred gentleman had jarred upon him in moments of peaceful reverie and errant fancy.

O’Rorke served his breakfast in silence; either he was not in communicative mood, or he mistrusted his guest. He answered with brevity the few questions about the road, only adding, “that it was a pity the gentleman had not mentioned before where he was going, for there was an old man and his granddaughter had just set out on that very road.”

“The child I saw here yesterday?”

“The same.”

“Have they been long gone? Could I overtake them, think you?”

“Easy enough; they’ve taken some bread and a bottle of milk for their breakfast, and you’ll come up with them, if you walk briskly, before they reach the Gap.”

He lost no further time, but strapping on a light knapsack, and armed with a stout stick, set out at once.

“If it’s a gauger you are, you’d wish yourself back in the place you came from before night,” said O’Rorke, as he looked after him. Vyner was a good walker, and trained to the mountains, so that his eye quickly detected any available short cut, and enabled him at a glance to choose his path. If there was not actual peril in his position – thus alone and companionless in a wild region, where any suspicion may attach to the stranger – there was that amount of adventure that summons a man’s courage to its post, and tells him that he must look to his own safety; and who that has felt this sensation, this proud sense of self-dependence, does not know its ecstasy! Who has not tasted the small heroism of being alone on the mountain, on the wild heath at midnight, on the rolling sea with a gathering storm in the distance, and who, having felt, has not gloried in it?

But to the man who leaves behind a home of every comfort, where all that can adorn and embellish existence are to be found, the contrast of present privation with past indulgence has something wonderfully exciting. He pictures the pleasant drawing-room with its cheerful fire, and the happy faces round the hearth; he fancies he hears the merry laugh, the melodious chords of the piano, the swell of some sweet voice, and then he bends his ear to the rugged plash of the breaking sea, or the whistling wind as it sweeps through some Alpine “crevasse.” If no sense of such dangers arose to Vyner’s mind, yet there was enough to make him feel how different was his present position from anything that his daily life exacted. The chances that we voluntarily confront have a wondrous fascination.

From his map he learned that the estate which he wished to purchase began at the Gap of Inchegora, a solemn gorge visible for many a mile off! It was indeed a grand portal that same Gap, not fully fifty feet in width, and more than nine hundred in height – a mere fissure, in fact, as complete as though made by the stroke of a giant’s scimitar. With his eyes directed constantly to this spot, he went onward, and came at length to a little stream, at the margin of which, and under the shelter of a solitary ash, sat the old peasant and his granddaughter at their breakfast.

“I have walked hard to come up with you,” said Vyner. “I wanted to have your company to the Gap.” The old man touched his hat in acknowledgment of this speech, and then bent down his head, while the child spoke to him in Irish.

“‘Tis deaf my grandfather is, Sir, and he didn’t hear you,” said the girl.

“Tell him I would be glad he’d be my guide as far as Mort-na – ”

She laughed merrily at his poor attempt at the name, and said, with a racy intonation, “Mortnagheela. ‘Tis there we live ourselves.”

The old peasant munched his bread and lifted the bottle twice to his lips before he answered the girl’s question, and then said, “Ask him is he a gauger.”

“No,” said Vyner, laughing; “I have not come here to molest any one. I want nothing more than to look at your big mountains and grand old cliffs.”

“You’re a surveyor,” said the old man, whose hearing seemed to have not lost one word Vyner uttered.

“Not even that, my good friend – a mere idler, no more.”

The peasant said something in Irish to the child, and she laughed heartily at it, looking up the while in Vyner’s face, as though it made the jest more poignant.

“Well, will you let me bear you company, Katherine?” asked he. As the girl repeated the question, the old fellow gave a half impatient shrug of the shoulders, and uttered a few sentences in Irish with a voluble energy that savoured of passion.

“‘Tis what he says, Sir,” said the child; “that he was in trouble once before, and found it hard enough to get out of it, and if misfortune was to come to you, that he’d be blamed for it.”

“So, then, he’d rather have nothing to do with me,” said Vyner, smiling. “What does he mean by trouble?”

The old man looked up full in his face, and his eyes took an almost defiant expression as he said, “Isn’t the assizes trouble? – isn’t it trouble to be four months in gaol waiting for them? – isn’t it trouble to stand up in the dock, with two sons of your own, and be tried for your life?”

“Yes, that indeed may be called trouble,” said Vyner, compassionately, as he sat down on the bank and took out a cigar. “Do you smoke? Will you have one of these?”

The old man looked at the cigar and shook his head; either he did not value, or did not understand it.

“That’s the reason I come up here,” resumed the peasant. “I’m a Mayo man, and so is all belongin’ to me, but after that” – he laid an emphasis on the last word – “the landlord, ould Tom Luttrell, wouldn’t renew my lease, and so I come up to this wild place, where, praise be to the Virgin, there’s no leases nor landlords either.” “How does that happen? The land surely has an owner?” “If it has, I never saw him, nor you neither. And whoever he is, he knows better than to come here and ax for his rents.” The bitter laugh with which the old fellow finished his speech was scarcely short of an insult – indeed, Vyner half winced as he felt that it might have been meant as a menace to himself. “No,” continued he, as though following out the flow of his own thoughts; “there’s the Gap of Inchegora before us, and through that Gap tithe-proctor, agent, or bailiff, never passed, and if they did, they’d never pass back again!”

“And who is supposed to own these lands?” asked Vyner, mildly. “The College of Dublin has some of them; Lord Landsborough has more; John Luttrell of Arran says that there’s part of them his; and, for the matter of that, I might say that the mountain there was mine – and who’s to contradict me? – or what better am I after saying it?”

Pouring out a cupful of brandy from his flask, Vyner offered it to him, and this he took with gratitude, his eyes devouring with admiration the little silver goblet that held it.

“Drink Mr. Luttrell’s health,” said Vyner, pouring out the last of the liquor into the cup; “he was an old friend of mine long ago.”

“Here’s health to him, and long life, too, if it was any use to him,” said the man, doggedly.

“There is truth in what you mean; a life such as he leads now can be of little pleasure, or profit either.”

“And who brought him to it?” burst in the old man, fiercely, for the spirit had mounted to his brain, maddening and exciting him. “What was it but the ould Luttrell pride that ruined every one of them, and will ruin them yet? He married a decent girl, well brought up, and good-looking; she wasn’t a lady, but not a lady in the land had a better heart or a finer temper, but he wouldn’t own her for all that. No, not a bit of it; there she lived, now with one brother, now with another, nobody darin’ to call her Mrs. Luttrell, nor even as much as hint she was married. How we stood it – we never were very patient – I don’t know, but we did, and more ill luck to us for doing so!” There was a long pause before he continued: “At last there came that trouble I was telling you of. When Mr. Crowe was shot, and I was tuk with my two sons – as innocent every one of us as that little girl there, but what did that signify? – the Attorney-General said, ‘It’s eight-and-twenty years I’m coming this circuit, and I never knew a capital felony to be tried without a Malone in it! I wonder,’ says he, ‘will the time ever come when this will cease?’ There was eight of us then banished, some in Botany Bay, and some in America, and, by coorse, it was hard for us to make up money for the ‘defence’ – the more because we spent so much already on lawyers. Howsomever, we did do it. We got a pound here, and ten shillings there, and at last gathered twenty-two fourteen-six. I’ll never forget it, twenty-two fourteen-six – in fact, I used to go on saying it over to myself, as I sat in my cell, just as if saying it would make it grow. The attorney, Mr. Roach, who was a good friend of ours, towld me in secret that there was two or three ugly things in the case, and that short of ould Mr. Clancy, the King’s counsel, there warn’t a man could get us off; ‘and less than thirty guineas,’ says he, ‘won’t bring him down.’ All this time, none of us would ask Sally Luttrell for a farthin’. We all knew she had nothing of her own, and we wouldn’t be beholdin’ to Mr. Luttrell. At last, my youngest daughter couldn’t bear it any longer; she sets off for the house where Sally was stoppin’, and what she said, or how she did it, we never knew, but the next morning there came to Mr. Roach’s office a note with the money. It was an order on French’s Bank, signed with a letter L. When the trial was come on – it was the third day – the Crown lawyers was pushing hard to make out a charge of conspiracy, and show that half the country was in it, and at last declared that they were ready to prove that an immense sum of money lay in the Bank just to defend all the people that ever broke the law, or did anything wrong, and that in this case they would produce a list of subscribers, each of them down for some trifle, every one of whom had been once at least in that dock with an indictment against him. Sure enough, however he come by it, he had the list. And such a set of witnesses as he brought up never was seen afore. ‘Gentlemen of the jury, I only ask you to look at them,’ says he; ‘just look at them, and you’ll know what sort of a tie binds these people to the prisoners in the dock.’ Clancy said nothing till it was all over – he wouldn’t cross-question one – but he holds a bit of paper in his hand, and says, ‘My Lord,’ says he, ‘it appears to me, that to be poor and wear ragged clothes in this country is to be outlawed, and that any man whose condition is not as comfortable as my learned friend’s, must be declared a rebel to his King and a liar to his Maker. It’s very hard,’ says he, ‘but as it comes from so high an authority as the Attorney-General, it must be good law, and I’ll not dispute it. Fortunately, however, for my unhappy client, his character has not only made friends for him amongst good men and kind men – it is not only by his equals in life that his honest nature is known – poor labourers, humble peasants testify by their hard-earned pittance, freely given, to their love for an old neighbour and friend. But what good is it? They are poor, and must be perjured; they are half-famished, and of course they are infamous. But here, my Lord, is a witness well enough to do to be respected; he eats, drinks, and dresses in the way the law requires; he has an estate, and of course a conscience; he keeps an agent, and therefore he has a sowl to be saved; his sympathies are written down here at the cost of eleven pounds eight shillings, and – though his modesty is satisfied with a mere letter L – his name is John Hamilton Luttrell.’”