“Only your tenants, my lord, if you please.  I may shear them, a little, I trust; but you can’t suppose me capable of shearing—­”

“My lordship.  No, no, you are too honest; only you will allow me to insinuate, in the meantime, that I believe you have fleeced me to some purpose already.  I do not allude to your gambling debts, which, with my own, I have been obliged to pay; but to other opportunities which have come in your way.  It doesn’t matter, however; you are a pleasant and a useful fellow, and I believe that although you clip me yourself a little, you would permit no one else to do so.  And, by the way, talking of the respectable old peer, he is anything but a friend of yours, and urged me strongly to send you to the devil, as a cheat and impostor.”

“How is that, my lord?” asked Norton, with an interest which he could scarcely disguise.

“Why, he mentioned something of a conversation you had, in which you told him, you impudent dog—­and coolly to his face, too—­that you patronized his son while in France, and introduced him to several distinguished French noblemen, not one of whom, he had reason to believe, ever existed except in your own fertile and lying imagination.”

“And was that all?” asked Norton, who I began to entertain apprehensions of Morty O’Flaherty; “did he mention nothing else?”

“No,” replied Dunroe; “and you scoundrel, was not that a d—­d deal too much?”

Norton, now feeling that he was safe from Morty, laughed very heartily, and replied,

“It’s a fact, sure enough; but then, wasn’t it on your lordship’s account I bounced?  The lie, in point of fact, if it can be called one, was, therefore, more your lordship’s lie than mine.”

“How do you mean by ’if it can be called one’?”

“Why, if I did not introduce you to real noblemen, I did to some spurious specimens, gentlemen who taught you all the arts and etiquette of the gaming-table, of which, you know very well, my lord, you were then so shamefully ignorant, as to be quite unfit for the society of gentlemen, especially on the continent.”

“Yes, Tom, and the state of my property now tells me at what cost you taught me.  You see these tenants say they have not money, plead hard times, failure of crops, and depreciation of property.”

“Ay, and so they will plead, until I take them in hand.”

“And, upon my soul, I don’t care how soon that may be.”

“Monster of disobedience,” said Norton, ironically, “is it thus you speak of a beloved parent, and that parent a respectable old peer?  In other words, you wish him in kingdom come.  Repent, my lord—­retract those words, or dread ’the raven of the valley’.”

“Faith, Tom, there’s no use in concealing it.  It’s not that I wish him gone; but that I long as much to touch the property at large, as you the agency.  It’s a devilish tough affair, this illness of his.”

“Patience, my lord, and filial affection.”