Colonel B., immediately after his return home, sent for Mr. O'Brien, who waited on him with a greater degree of curiosity than perhaps he had ever felt before. The Colonel smiled as he extended his hand to him.
“Mr. O'Brien,” said he, “I knew you would feel anxious to hear the result of my visit to the estate which this man with the nickname managed for me.”
“Managed, sir? Did you say managed?”
“I spoke in the past time, O'Brien: he is out.”
“Then your protege's story was correct, sir?”
“True to a title. O'Brien, there is something extraordinary in that boy; otherwise, how could it happen that a sickly, miserable-looking creature, absolutely in tatters, could have impressed us both so strongly with a sense of the injustice done ten years ago to his father? It is, indeed, remarkable.”
“The boy, Colonel, deeply felt that act of injustice, and the expression of it came home to the heart.”
“I have restored his father, however. The poor man and his family are once more happy. I have stocked their old farm for them; in! fact, they now enjoy comfort and independence.”
“I am glad, sir, that you have done them justice. That act, alone, will go far to redeem your character from the odium which the conduct of your agent was calculated to throw upon it.”
“There is not probably in Ireland a landlord so popular as I am this moment—at least among my tenants on that property. Restoring M'Evoy, however, is but a small part of what I have done. Carson's pranks were incredible. He was a rack-renter of the first water. A person named Brady had paid him twenty-five guineas as a douceur—in other words, as a bribe—for renewing a lease for him; yet, after having received the money, he kept the poor man dangling after him, and at length told him that he was offered a larger sum by another. In some cases he kept back the receipts, and made the poor people pay twice, which was still more iniquitous. Then, sir, he would not take bank notes in payment. No; he was so wonderfully concientious, and so zealously punctual in fulfilling my wishes, as he told them on the subject, that nothing would pass in payment but gold. This gold, sir, they were compelled to receive from himself, at a most oppressive premium; so that he actually fleeced them under my name, in every conceivable manner and form of villainy. He is a usurer, too; and, I am told, worth forty or fifty thousand pounds: but, thank heaven! he is no longer an agent of mine.”