in his
leisure moments, summarised Mr. Quinn's character thus: "He'd ate the
head off you, thon lad would, an' beg your pardon the minute after!"
That, on the whole, was a just and adequate description of Mr. Quinn,
and certainly no one had better qualifications for forming an estimate
of his employer's character than William Henry Matier; for he had spent
many years of his life in Mr. Quinn's service and had, on an average,
been discharged from it about ten times per annum.

Mr. Quinn, the younger son of a poor landowner in the north of Ireland,
had practised at the Bar without success. His failure to maintain
himself at the law was not due to ignorance of the statutes of the land
or to any inability on his part to distort their meaning: it was due
solely to the fact that he was a Unionist and a gentleman. His Unionism,
in a land where politics take the place of religion, prevented him from
receiving briefs from Nationalists, and his gentlemanliness made it
impossible for him to accept briefs from the Unionists; for if an Irish
lawyer be a Unionist, he must play the lickspittle and tomtoady to the
lords and ladies of the Ascendency and be ready at all times and on all
occasions to deride Ireland and befoul his countrymen in the presence of
the English people.

"I'd rather eat dirt," Mr. Quinn used to say, "than earn my livin' that
way!"

He contrived, however, to win prosperity by his marriage to Miss
Catherine Clotworthy, the only daughter of a Belfast mill-owner: a lady
of watery spirit who irked her husband terribly because she affected an
English manner and an English accent. He was very proud of his Irish
blood and he took great pride in using Ulster turns of speech. Mrs.
Quinn, whose education had been "finished" at Brighton, frequently urged
him to abandon his "broad" way of talking, but the principal effect she
had on him was to intensify the broadness of his accent.

"I do wish you wouldn't say _Aye_," she would plead, "when you mean
_Yes_!"

And then he would roar at her. "What! Bleat like a damned Englishman!
Where's your wit, woman?"

Soon after the birth of her son, she died, and her concern, therefore,
with this story is slight. It is sufficient to say of her that she
inherited a substantial fortune from her father and that she passed it
on, almost unimpaired, to her husband, thus enabling him to live in
comfortable disregard of the law as a means of livelihood. He had a
small estate in County Ant