For one week these feelings quite destroyed poor Colligan’s peace of mind; during the second, he determined to make a clean breast of it; and, on the first day of the third week, after turning in his mind twenty different people—Martin Kelly—young Daly—the widow—the parish priest—the parish parson—the nearest stipendiary magistrate—and a brother doctor in Tuam, he at last determined on going to Lord Ballindine, as being both a magistrate and a friend of the Kellys. Doctor Colligan himself was not at all acquainted with Lord Ballindine: he attended none of the family, who extensively patronised his rival, and he had never been inside Kelly’s Court house. He felt, therefore, considerable embarrassment at his mission; but he made up his mind to go, and, manfully setting himself in his antique rickety gig, started early enough, to catch Lord Ballindine, as he thought, before he left the house after breakfast. Lord Ballindine had spent the last week or ten days restlessly enough. Armstrong, his clerical ambassador, had not yet started on his mission to Grey Abbey, and innumerable difficulties seemed to arise to prevent his doing so. First of all, the black cloth was to be purchased, and a tailor, sufficiently adept for making up the new suit, was to be caught. This was a work of some time; for though there is in the West of Ireland a very general complaint of the stagnation of trade, trade itself is never so stagnant as are the tradesmen, when work is to be done; and it is useless for a poor wight to think of getting his coat or his boots, till such time as absolute want shall have driven the artisan to look for the price of his job—unless some private and underhand influence be used, as was done in the case of Jerry Blake’s new leather breeches. This cause of delay was, however, not mentioned to Lord Ballindine; but when it was well got over, and a neighbouring parson procured to preach on the next Sunday to Mrs O’Kelly and the three policemen who attended Ballindine Church, Mrs Armstrong broke her thumb with the rolling-pin while making a beef pudding for the family dinner, and her husband’s departure was again retarded. And then, on the next Sunday, the neighbouring parson could not leave his own policemen, and the two spinsters, who usually formed his audience. All this tormented Lord Ballindine, and he was really thinking of giving up the idea of sending Mr Armstrong altogether, when he received the following letter from his friend Dot Blake. “Limmer’s Hotel. April, 1847. “Dear Frank,