‘Well, it’s a fact. They are going to make him a second secretary somewhere, and pension him off. He has done his work: he voted an Arms Bill and an Insurrection Act, and he had the influenza when the amnesty petition was presented, and sure no more could be expected from any man.’ ‘The question scarcely concerns me; our interest in the county is so small now, we count for very little.’ ‘And don’t you know how to make your influence greater?’ ‘I cannot say that I do.’ ‘Go to the poll yourself, Richard Kearney, and be the member.’ ‘You are talking of an impossibility, Mr. Donogan. First of all, we have no fortune, no large estates in the county, with a wide tenantry and plenty of votes; secondly, we have no place amongst the county families, as our old name and good blood might have given us; thirdly, we are of the wrong religion, and, I take it, with as wrong politics; and lastly, we should not know what to do with the prize if we had won it.’ ‘Wrong in every one of your propositions--wholly wrong,’ cried the other. ‘The party that will send you in won’t want to be bribed, and they’ll be proud of a man who doesn’t overtop them with his money. You don’t need the big families, for you’ll beat them. Your religion is the right one, for it will give you the Priests; and your politics shall be Repeal, and it will give you the Peasants; and as to not knowing what to do when you’re elected, are you so mighty well off in life that you’ve nothing to wish for?’ ‘I can scarcely say that,’ said Dick, smiling. ‘Give me a few minutes’ attention,’ said Donogan, ‘and I think I’ll show you that I’ve thought this matter out and out; indeed, before I sat down to write to you, I went into all the details.’ And now, with a clearness and a fairness that astonished Kearney, this strange-looking fellow proceeded to prove how he had weighed the whole difficulty, and saw how, in the nice balance of the two great parties who would contest the seat, the Repealer would step in and steal votes from both. He showed not only that he knew every barony of the county, and every estate and property, but that he had a clear insight into the different localities where discontent prevailed, and places where there was something more than discontent. ‘It is down there,’ said he significantly, ‘that I can be useful. The man that has had his foot in the dock, and only escaped having his head in the noose, is never discredited in Ireland. Talk Parliament and parliamentary tactics to the small shopkeepers in Moate, and leave me to talk treason to the people in the bog.’ ‘But I mistake you and your friends greatly,’ said Kearney, ‘if these were the tactics you always followed; I thought that you were the physical-force party, who sneered at constitutionalism and only believed in the pike.’