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 Antrim, which included part of the village of Ballymartin, and there he passed his days in agricultural pursuits. 2 Mr. Quinn, as has been stated, was a Unionist, and, in spite of his Catholic name, a Protestant; but he had a poor opinion of his Unionist neighbours who, so he said, were far more loyal to England than England quite liked. He hated the English accent ... "finicky bleatin'," he called it ... and declared, though he really knew better, that all Englishmen spoke with a Cockney intonation. "A lot of h-droppers," he called them, adding, "God gave them a decent language, but they haven't the gumption to talk it!" The Oxford voice, in his opinion, was educated Cockney, uglier, if possible, than the uneducated brand.