in ebony--you understand--the
slave-trade, I mean. How would these fine gentlemen, I should like to
know, receive him? Would they look coldly and distantly at him? I should
naturally wish to see him at my house, but not that he might be offered
anything like slight or insult."

"I should defer it, certainly. I would recommend you not pressing this
visit, till you have surrounded yourself with a certain set, a party by
whom you will be known and upheld."

"So then, if I understand you aright, I must obtain a kind of security
for my social good conduct before the world will trust me? Now, this
does seem rather hard, particularly as no man is guilty till he has been
convicted."

"The bail-bond is little else than a matter of form," said Mr.
Kennyfeck, smiling, and glad to cap an allusion which his professional
pursuits made easy of comprehension.

"Well," sighed Cashel, "I'm not quite certain that this same world of
yours and I shall be long friends, if even we begin as such. I have all
my life been somewhat of a rebel, except where authority was lax enough
to make resistance unnecessary. How am I to get on here, hemmed in and
fenced by a hundred restrictions?"

Mr. Kennyfeck could not explain to him that these barriers were less
restrictions against personal liberty than defences against aggression;
so he only murmured some commonplaces about "getting habituated," and
"time," and so on, and apologized for what he, in reality, might have
expatiated on as privileges.

"My mistress wishes to know, sir," said a footman, at this juncture, "if
Mr. Cashel will drive out with her? the carriage is at the door."

"Delighted!" cried Cashel, looking at the same time most uncourteously
pleased to get away from his tiresome companion.

Cashel found Mrs. Kennyfeck and her daughters seated in a handsome
barouche, whose appointments, bating, perhaps, some little exuberance
in display, were all perfect. The ladies, too, were most becomingly
attired, and the transition from the tittle cobwebbed den of the
solicitor to the free air and pleasant companionship, excited his
spirits to the utmost.

"How bored you must have been by that interview!" said Mrs. Kennyfeck,
as they drove away.

"Why do you say so?" said Cashel, smiling.

"You looked so weary, so thoroughly tired out, when you joined us. I'm
certain Mr. Kennyfeck has been reading aloud all the deeds and documents
of the trial, and reciting the hundred-and-one difficultie