I would be as slow to believe that a
man could search the heart, study the passions, weigh the motives, and
balance the impulses of his fellow-men, for mere purposes of trick or
deception, as that a doctor would devote years of toil and labor in his
art for the sole aim of poisoning and destroying his patients.

Few men out of the lists of party took so great an interest in the great
struggle as Tony Fagan. With the success of the patriotic side his own
ambitions were intimately involved. It was not the section of great
wealth, and there was no saying to what eminence a man of his affluence
might attain amongst them. He not only kept a registry of all the
members, with their peculiar leanings and party connections annexed to
it, but he carefully noted down any circumstance likely to influence
the vote or sway the motives of the principal leaders of the people. His
sources of information were considerable, and penetrated every class of
society, from the high world of Dublin down to the lowest resorts of
the rabble. The needy gentleman, hard pressed for resources, found
his dealings with the Grinder wonderfully facilitated by any little
communication of backstairs doings at the Castle, or the secrets of the
chief secretary's office; while the humble ballad-singer of the streets,
or the ragged newsman, were equally certain of a "tester," could they
only supply some passing incident that bore upon the relations of party.

If not one of the most brilliant, certainly one of the most assiduous of
Fagan's emissaries was a certain Samuel Cotterell,--a man who held the
high and responsible dignity of state trumpeter in the Irish Court. He
was a large, fine-looking, though somewhat over-corpulent, personage,
with a most imposing dignity of air, and a calm self-possession of
manner that well became his functions. Perhaps this was natural to him;
but some of it may well be attributed to his sense of the dignity of
one who only appeared in public on the very greatest occasions, and was
himself the herald of a splendid ceremonial.

From long association with the Viceregal Court, he had grown to
believe himself a part, and by no means an insignificant part, of the
Government, and spoke of himself as of one mysteriously but intimately
mixed up in all the acts of the State. The pretentious absurdity, the
overweening vanity of the man, which afforded so much amusement to
others, gave no pleasure to Fagan,--they rather vexed and irritate