The old lawyer, however, finds no difficulty in the double character. With his wig and gown he puts on his sarcasm, his insolence, and his incredulity. His brief bag opens to him a Pandora's box of noxious influences; and as he passes the precincts of the court, he leaves behind him all the amenities of life and all the charities of his nature. The young barrister does not find the transmutation so easy. He gives himself unreservedly to his client, and does not measure his ardor by the instructions in his brief. Let us ask pardon of our reader for what may seem _a mal à propos_ digression; but we have been led to these remarks by the interests of our story. It was in the large dining-room of the “Martin Arms” at Oughterard, that a party of lawyers spent the evening, some of whose events, elsewhere, our last chapter has recorded. It was the Bar mess of the Western Circuit, and the chair was filled by no less a person than “Father Repton.” This able “leader” had determined not to visit the West of Ireland so long as his friend Martin remained abroad; but a very urgent entreaty from Scanlan, and a pressing request for his presence, had induced him to waive that resolve, and come down special to Oughterard for the Magennis case. A simple case of ejectment could scarcely have called for that imposing array of learned counsel who had repaired to this unfrequented spot; so small a skirmish could never have called for the horse, foot, and dragoons of law,--the wily conveyancer, the clap-trap orator, the browbeater of witnesses, and the light sharpshooter at technicalities; and yet there they were all met, and--with all reverence be it spoken--very jolly companions they were. An admirable rule precluded the introduction of, or even an allusion to, professional subjects, save when the burden of a joke, whose success might excuse the transgression; and thus these crafty, keen intelligences argued, disputed, jested, and disported together, in a vein which less practised talkers would find it hard to rival. To the practice of these social amenities is doubtless ascribable the absence of any rancor from the rough contests and collisions of public life, and thus men of every shade of politics and party, differing even in class and condition, formed admirable social elements, and cohered together to perfection. As the evening wore on, the company insensibly thinned off. Some of the hard-workers retired early; a few, whose affectation it was to pretend engagements, followed. The “juniors” repaired in different groups to the chambers of their friends, where loo and brandy-and-water awaited them; and at last Repton was left, with only two others, sole occupants of that spacious apartment. His companions were, like himself, soldiers of the “Vieille Garde” veterans who remembered Curran and Lawrence Parsons, John Toler and Saurin, and a host of others, who only needed that the sphere should have been greater to be themselves among the great of the nation.