case, I
would rather decline the thing altogether."

"Why? why? sure if you can defind him chapely, isn't it so much saved?
isn't it the same as if you definded him at a higher rate? Sure, if one
lawyer tells the truth for the poor boy, ten or fifteen can do no more;
an' thin maybe they'd crass in an' puzzle one another if you hired too
many of them."

"How would you feel, should your son be found guilty; you know the
penalty is his life. He will be executed."

O'Brien could hear the old man clap his hands in agony, and in truth he
walked about wringing them as if his heart would burst.

"What will I do?" he exclaimed; "what will I do? I can't lose him, an' I
won't lose him! Lose him! oh God, oh God, it is to lose the best son and
only child that ever man had! Wouldn't it be downright murdher in me to
let him be lost if I could prevint it? Oh, if I was in his place, what
wouldn't he do for me, for the father that he always loved!"

The tears ran copiously down his furrowed cheeks; and his whole
appearance evinced such distraction and anguish as could rarely be
witnessed.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," he added; "I'll give you fifty guineas
after my death if you'll defind him properly."

"Much obliged," replied the other; "but in matters of this kind we make
no such bargains."

"I'll make it sixty, in case you don't axe it now."

"Can you give me security that I'll survive you? Why, you are
tough-looking enough to outlive me."

"Me tough!--no, God help me, my race is nearly ran; I won't be alive
this day twelve months--look at the differ atween us."

"This is idle talk," said the attorney; "determine on what you'll do;
really my time is valuable, and I am now wasting it to no purpose."

"Take the offer--depind on't it'll soon come to you."

"No, no," said the other, coolly; "not at all; we might shut up shop if
we made such _post obit_ bargains as that."

"I'll tell you," said Fardorougha; "I'll tell you what;" his eyes
gleamed with a reddish, bitter light; and he clasped his withered hands
together, until the joints cracked, and the perspiration teemed from his
pale, sallow features; "I'll tell you," he added--"I'll make it seventy!"

"No."

"Aighty!"

"No."

"Ninety!"--with a husky shriek

"No, no."

"A hundhre'--a hundhre'--a hundhre'," he shouted; "a hundhre', when I'm
gone--when I'm gone!"

One solemn and determined No, that precluded all hopes of any such
arrangement, was the only re