Few men out of the lists of party took so great an interest in the great struggle as Tony Fagan. With the success of the patriotic side his own ambitions were intimately involved. It was not the section of great wealth, and there was no saying to what eminence a man of his affluence might attain amongst them. He not only kept a registry of all the members, with their peculiar leanings and party connections annexed to it, but he carefully noted down any circumstance likely to influence the vote or sway the motives of the principal leaders of the people. His sources of information were considerable, and penetrated every class of society, from the high world of Dublin down to the lowest resorts of the rabble. The needy gentleman, hard pressed for resources, found his dealings with the Grinder wonderfully facilitated by any little communication of backstairs doings at the Castle, or the secrets of the chief secretary's office; while the humble ballad-singer of the streets, or the ragged newsman, were equally certain of a “tester,” could they only supply some passing incident that bore upon the relations of party. If not one of the most brilliant, certainly one of the most assiduous of Fagan's emissaries was a certain Samuel Cotterell,--a man who held the high and responsible dignity of state trumpeter in the Irish Court. He was a large, fine-looking, though somewhat over-corpulent, personage, with a most imposing dignity of air, and a calm self-possession of manner that well became his functions. Perhaps this was natural to him; but some of it may well be attributed to his sense of the dignity of one who only appeared in public on the very greatest occasions, and was himself the herald of a splendid ceremonial. From long association with the Viceregal Court, he had grown to believe himself a part, and by no means an insignificant part, of the Government, and spoke of himself as of one mysteriously but intimately mixed up in all the acts of the State. The pretentious absurdity, the overweening vanity of the man, which afforded so much amusement to others, gave no pleasure to Fagan,--they rather vexed and irritated him; but these were feelings that he cautiously concealed, for he well knew the touchy and irritable nature of the man, and that whatever little information could be derived from him was only come-at-able by indulging his vein of self-esteem.