The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. I (of II). Lever Charles James

said he, with a very significant dryness.

      “I should think I was, sir; and nothing very astonishing in the confession, besides.”

      “And Dublin, madam?”

      “Don’t speak of it. If one must endure prison discipline, at least let us have a cell to ourselves. Good-morning, Miss Martin. I hope you enjoyed your party on the water?”

      This speech was addressed to Mary, who now entered the room dressed in a plain morning costume, and in her quiet, almost demure look resembling in nothing the dripping and dishevelled figure that sprung from the boat.

      “Good-morning, aunt,” said she, gayly. “Good-morning, uncle,” kissing, as she spoke, his cheek, and patting him fondly on the shoulder. “I saw you out on the rocks as we were coming in.”

      “Pooh, pooh!” said he, in affected indifference. “I knew there was no danger – ”

      “Yes, but there was, though,” said she, quickly. “If we had n’t set all sail on her, she ‘d have been pooped to a certainty; and I can tell you I was in a rare fright, too.”

      “Oh, indeed; you confess to such an ignoble emotion?” said Lady Dorothea, with a sneer.

      “That I do, aunt, for I had poor Madge Lennan’s little boy on my lap all the time; and if it came to a swim, I don’t see how he was to be saved.”

      “You ‘d not have left him to his fate, I suppose?” said Lady Dorothea.

      “I scarcely know what I should have done. I sincerely hope it would have been my best; but in a moment like that, within sight of home, too – ” Her eyes met her uncle’s as she said this; he had raised them from his newspaper, and bent them fully on her. There was that in their expression which appealed so strongly to her heart that instead of finishing her speech she sprung towards him and threw her arms around his neck.

      “Quite a scene; and I detest scenes,” said Lady Dorothen, as she arose and swept out of the room contemptuously; but they neither heard the remark nor noticed her departure.

      CHAPTER IV. MAURICE SCANLAN, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW

      About an hour after the occurrence mentioned in our last chapter, the quiet little village of Kilkieran was startled by the sharp clattering sounds of horses’ feet, as Mr. Scanlan’s tandem came slinging along; and after various little dexterities amid stranded boats, disabled anchors, and broken capstans, drew up at the gate of the Osprey’s Nest. When men devise their own equipage, they invariably impart to it a strong infusion of their own idiosyncrasy. The quiet souls who drag through life in chocolate-colored barouches, with horses indifferently matched, give no clew to their special characteristics; but your men of tax-carts and tandems, your Jehus of four-in-hand teams, write their own biographies in every detail of the “turn-out.”

      Maurice Scanlan was a sporting attorney, and from the group of game cocks neatly painted on the hind panel, to the wiry, well-bred, and well-looking screws before him, all was indicative of the man. The conveyance was high and red-wheeled; the nags were a chestnut and a gray; he drove them without winkers or bearing-reins, wearing his white hat a very little on ope side, and gracefully tilting his elbow as he admonished the wheeler with the “crop” of his whip. He was a good-looking, showy, vulgar, self-sufficient kind of fellow, with consummate shrewdness in all business transactions, only marred by one solitary weak point, – an intense desire to be received intimately by persons of a station above his own, and to seem, at least, to be the admitted guest of very fashionable society. It was not a very easy matter to know if this Lord-worship of his was real, or merely affected, since, certainly, the profit he derived from the assumption was very considerable, and Maurice was intrusted with a variety of secret-service transactions, and private affairs for the nobility, which they would never have dreamed of committing to the hands of their more recognized advisers.

      If men would have been slow to engage his services in any grave or important suit, he was invaluable in all the ordinary and constantly occurring events of this changeful world. He knew every one’s difficulties and embarrassments. There was not a hitch in a settlement, nor a spavin in your stables, could escape him. He seemed to possess a kind of intuitive appreciation of a flaw; and he pounced upon a defect with a rapidity that counterfeited genius. To these gifts he added a consummate knowledge of his countrymen. He had emerged from the very humblest class of the people, and he knew them thoroughly; with all their moods of habitual distrust and momentary enthusiasm, – with all their phases of sanguine hopefulness he was familiar; and he could mould and fashion and weld them to his will, as passive subjects as the heated bar under the hammer of the smith.

      As an electioneering agent he was unequalled. It was precisely the sphere in which his varied abilities were best exercised; and it was, besides, an arena in which he was proud of figuring.

      For a while he seemed – at least in his own eyes – to stand on a higher eminence than the candidate he represented, and to be a more prominent and far grander personage than his principal. In fact, it was only under some tacit acknowledgment of this temporary supremacy that his services were obtainable; his invariable stipulation being that he was to have the entire and uncontrolled direction of the election.

      Envious tongues and ungenerous talkers did, indeed, say that Maurice insisted upon this condition with very different objects in view, and that his unlimited powers found their pleasantest exercise in the inexplorable realms of secret bribery; however, it is but fair to say that he was eminently successful, and that one failure alone in his whole career occurred to show the proverbial capriciousness of fortune.

      With the little borough of Oughterard he had become so identified that his engagement was regarded as one of the first elements of success. Hitherto, indeed, the battle had been always an easy one. The Liberal party – as they pleasantly assumed to style themselves – had gone no further in opposition than an occasional burst of intemperate language, and an effort – usually a failure – at a street row during the election. So little of either energy or organization had marked their endeavors, that the great leader of the day had stigmatized their town with terms of heavy censure, and even pronounced them unworthy of the cause. An emissary, deputed to report upon the political state of the borough, had described the voters as mere dependants on the haughty purse-proud proprietor of Cro’ Martin, who seemed, even without an effort, to nominate the sitting member.

      The great measure of the year ‘29 – the Catholic Relief Bill – had now, however, suggested to even more apathetic constituencies the prospect of a successful struggle. The thought of being represented by “one of their own sort” was no mean stimulant to exertion; and the leading spirits of the place had frequently conferred together as to what steps should be taken to rescue the borough from the degrading thraldom of an aristocratic domination. Lord Kilmorris, it is true, was rather popular with them than the reverse. The eldest son of an Earl, who only cared to sit in Parliament on easy terms, till the course of time and events should call him to the Upper House, he never took any very decided political line, but sat on Tory benches and gave an occasional vote to Liberal measures, as though foreshadowing that new school who were to take the field under the middle designation of Conservatives. Some very remote relationship to Lady Dorothea’s family had first introduced him to the Martins’ notice; and partly from this connection, and partly because young Harry Martin was too young to sit in Parliament, they had continued to support him to the present time.

      Mr. Martin himself cared very little for politics; had he even cared more, he would not have sacrificed to them one jot of that indolent, lazy, apathetic existence which alone he seemed to prize. He was rather grateful than otherwise to Lord Kilmorris for taking upon him the trouble of a contest, if there should be such a thing. His greatest excuse through life, at least to himself, had ever been that he was “unprepared.” He had been in that unhappy state about everything since he was born, and so, apparently, was he destined to continue to the very last. With large resources, he was never prepared for any sudden demand for money. When called on for any exertion of mind or body, when asked to assist a friend or rescue a relation from difficulty, he was quite unprepared; and so convinced was he that this was a fatality under which he labored, that no sooner had he uttered the expression than he totally absolved himself from every shadow of reproach that