And such a set of witnesses as he brought up never was seen afore. ‘Gentlemen of the jury, I only ask you to look at them,’ says he; ‘just look at them, and you’ll know what sort of a tie binds these people to the prisoners in the dock.’ Clancy said nothing till it was all over--he wouldn’t cross-question one--but he holds a bit of paper in his hand, and says, ‘My Lord,’ says he, ‘it appears to me, that to be poor and wear ragged clothes in this country is to be outlawed, and that any man whose condition is not as comfortable as my learned friend’s, must be declared a rebel to his King and a liar to his Maker. It’s very hard,’ says he, ‘but as it comes from so high an authority as the Attorney-General, it must be good law, and I’ll not dispute it. Fortunately, however, for my unhappy client, his character has not only made friends for him amongst good men and kind men--it is not only by his equals in life that his honest nature is known--poor labourers, humble peasants testify by their hard-earned pittance, freely given, to their love for an old neighbour and friend. But what good is it? They are poor, and must be perjured; they are half-famished, and of course they are infamous. But here, my Lord, is a witness well enough to do to be respected; he eats, drinks, and dresses in the way the law requires; he has an estate, and of course a conscience; he keeps an agent, and therefore he has a sowl to be saved; his sympathies are written down here at the cost of eleven pounds eight shillings, and--though his modesty is satisfied with a mere letter L--his name is John Hamilton Luttrell.’” As if the strain on his memory to recal the precise words employed, and to bring back the whole scene, had been too much for him, or as though the emotions of the past had surged back to overwhelm him, the old peasant held his hand over his eyes, and sat several minutes without speaking. “Did Luttrell come on the table, then?” asked Vyner. “No, Sir; he was seen in court a short time before, but when he was called he couldn’t be found; nor from that day out was he ever seen in the streets of Castlebar. It was that sent him away to the island. His pride and his shame together.” “You are less than just to my old friend,” said Vyner, warmly. “To know what he felt, to understand all the difficulties that he saw before him. you should be in _his_ place as he was.” “That’s as much as to say that I ought to be a gentleman before I condemned him,” said the old fellow, with a look of intense craftiness. “But the lawyer that defended _me_ didn’t want to be a labourin’ man to explain what _I_ felt, or what was passin’ in my heart. No, Sir, there’s things in the world that are just the same to the rich man as to the poor one, just as sickness and sorrow is. Get up, Kitty, we’re stayin’ too long here; it will be black night before we get home.” “How many miles do you count it?” “Twenty-one--long miles, too--the last four of them over shingle, and steep besides.”