“However, of course I shall not press that.  I shall be only too glad to obtain possession without the scandal of having to show, in the public courts, that my father’s brother was a villain.”

“The ould fox!” Mike exclaimed indignantly.  “I felt sure, when you told me what the counsellor had said, that he would wriggle out of it somehow.  I would give all the gold pieces I have in my belt for half an hour’s talk with him, with a good shillelah!”

“Well, we can afford to let bygones be bygones, Mike.  And after all, he did me a service, unwittingly, in sending me over to France.  In the first place, I had three years of stirring life; in the next, I have made many good friends, and have gained the patronage of two powerful noblemen, without which I should have assuredly never come in for Kilkargan at all.”

“That is true for you, your honour.  And without it, I might be still a private in O’Brien’s regiment, instead of being your honour’s body servant.”

“And friend, Mike.”

“Yes, sir, as you are good enough to say so.”

Mr. Fergusson put John O’Carroll’s letter down, with a gesture of disgust, after he had read it.

“It is what might have been expected from such a man,” he said.  “A traitor to the cause he once adhered to, false to his religion, and a usurper of his nephew’s rights.

“At any rate, Mr. O’Carroll, I congratulate you.  It has prevented a grievous scandal from being made public, and the large expenditure entailed by such a case.  You have now only to go down and take possession.”

“I shall write to my uncle, and give him a week to clear out, and to make what explanation he chooses of the change.”

Gerald wrote at once to his uncle.  It was coldly worded, and showed unmistakably that he was, in no way, deceived by the professions in his letter.  He told him that he considered it fair that he should retain the savings he had made, as he had personally been confirmed in the ownership of Kilkargan, the Government being ignorant that his brother had left a son.  He said that he thought it would be more pleasant, for both of them, that they should not meet, and wished, therefore, that he would leave, before his arrival to take possession.

John O’Carroll at once summoned the tenants, and astonished them by informing them that, he was glad to say, he was free at last to lay down the position he had held as owner of Kilkargan.  That his brother James had left a son, whom they all knew as Desmond Kennedy, but whom he had been obliged to treat with coldness, lest suspicions should be excited as to his identity.  Had this been known, he would assuredly have been proscribed as the son of a rebel, and debarred by law from any inheritance.  He was delighted to say that the time had come when he could publicly acknowledge him, and place him in possession of the estate, as Her Majesty had granted him a special indemnity against the pains and penalties incurred by his father’s act of rebellion and treason, and had restored to him his full rights.