From my mother I had, alas! long been parted, for though when I was in my father's keeping, after she had fled from him, she had made many attempts to wrest me from him and to get me away to England, she, too, had come to believe that I had either died in the hands of, or been killed by, the villain O'Rourke, so that of her I had now heard nothing for more than two years. But as Mr. Kinchella had written her informing her of her husband's impending death, of my safety for the time being, and also of the probable usurpation by my uncle, we were looking for some news of her by every English packet that came in. "If her ladyship can compass it," this good and pious young man said on the night after my father's burial, and when he and Oliver and I sat in his room over the fire, "she should come to Dublin at once. There is much to be done at which alone she can help, and it will want all the assistance of her family to outwit thy uncle. Unfortunately my lord did go about the city saying that you were dead and that, therefore, he and his brother were at liberty to dispose of the property, and, thus, there is a terrible amount of evidence to contend against." "With submission, sir," Oliver said, "surely all that should make in the young lord's favour. For who shall doubt that his mother can swear to him as their child? Then there are the peasants with whom he was placed as an infant at New Ross, and, again, the tutors he was with, both there and here and in England, to say nothing of many servants. While, to add to all, his uncle has made himself a criminal by seconding his father in the false reports of his death and obtaining money thereby. With my lady's evidence and yours and mine alone, to say nothing of aught else, we should surely be able to move the King-at-Arms to enregister him as his father's heir." Yet, oh, untoward fate! my mother could not come, but in her place sent a letter which, being of much importance as affecting all that afterwards occurred, I here set down, fairly copied. _From the Viscountess St. Amande, at_ 5 _Denzil Street, Clare Market, ye _29_th of November_, 1727. _To Mr. Jonathan Kinchella, Student, Trinity College, Dublin_. Honoured Sir,