Having now spoken of the master of Sandymount Castle, let me now speak of one whom my eldest sister called the Deputy Master, old Michael, who for more than forty years was my uncle's butler. It was my mother who hired him when he was a young man with black hair and blue eyes. Some weeks afterwards he was found drunk. He at once, at my uncle's demand, took the pledge, and never after broke it, even though we youngsters, out of pure mischief, often tried to tempt him. I remember him as a man of white hair with an amusing resemblance to John Stuart Mill--I say amusing because Michael was short in stature and sturdily built, whereas we all know J. S. M. was tall and slender. Before coming to my uncle he had been butler to an English general whom he left because 'the Mistress had insulted his religion,' which so distressed the general that he had insisted on Michael driving from the house in the family carriage. Michael himself told me this, and that when he had got to some distance from the house, he transferred himself to a Dublin jaunting-car. He was a perfect servant, yet I never knew a man of greater self-respect. The Irish make good servants and their gentry make good masters, because both are still mediævalists, and belong to an age when it was accepted by everybody from the king to the peasant that to serve is honourable. My uncle's manner with all his servants was brief and authoritative, as though he could still send them to the guardroom, and these relations with Michael never relaxed during all the forty years. All the same Michael was Deputy Master. Sometimes when we were at dinner and Michael attending us, he would say 'Mr. So-and-So called to day' & my uncle would invariably reply 'Did you ask him to dinner?' 'Yes Sir'. My Uncle came to see me in London, a few years before his death, and after he had left Sandymount, and said 'When I told Michael of my intention, I declare to God I don't know which of us should have been most pitied.' When last I saw Michael he was ill and visibly failing. He came from his bed-room with a blanket around his shoulders but his bright blue eyes were the same as ever and he told me one of the old stories. 'Did I ever tell you, Mr. Johnnie, the story of Mr. O'Connell and the officer?' I had heard it at least fifty times, but I said it was new to me. The officer was a witness called in some law case in which O'Connell was employed. 'Mr. Soldier' said O'Connell, 'what do you know of this matter?' 'I am not a soldier, I am an officer' said the witness. 'Then' said Mr. O'Connell 'Mr. Officer and no soldier, what do you know of this matter?'