“The way I figure the thing,” he said, with his eye on the envelope, “is this: The mines were going all right when your man went away, twelve years ago. The output then was worth, say, eight thousand pounds sterling a year. Since then it has once or twice gone as high at twenty thousand pounds, and once it’s been down to eleven thousand pouunds. From all I can gather the average ought to have been, say, fourteen thousand pounds. The mining tenants hold on the usual thirty-one-year lease, paying fifty pounds a year to begin with, and then one-sixteenth on the gross sales. There is a provision of a maximum surface-drainage charge of two pounds an acre, but there’s nothing in that. On my average, the whole royalties would be nine hundred and twenty-five pounds a year. That, in twelve years, would be eleven thousand pounds. I think, myself, that it’s a good deal more; but that’ll do as a starter. And you say O’Daly’s been sending the boss two hundred pounds a year?” “At laste for tin years--not for the last two,” said Jerry. “Very well, then; you’ve got nine thousand pounds. The interest on that for two years alone would make up all he sent away.” “An’ ’t is your idea that O’Daly has putt by all that money?” “And half as much more; and not a cent of it all belongs to him.” “Thrue for you; ’t is Miss Katie’s money,” mourned Jerry, shaking his curly red head and disturbing his fat breast with a prolonged sigh. “But she’ll never lay finger to anny of it. Oh, Cormac, you’re the divil!” The young man sniffed impatiently. “That’s the worst of you fellows,” he said, sharply. “You take fright like a flock of sheep. What the deuce are you afraid of? No wonder Ireland isn’t free, with men who have got to sit down and cry every few minutes!” Then the spectacle of pained surprise on Jerry’s fat face drove away his mood of criticism. “Or no; I don’t mean that,” he hastened to add; “but really, there’s no earthly reason why O’Daly shouldn’t be brought to book. There’s law here for that sort of thing as much as there is anywhere else.” “’T was Miss Katie’s own words that I’d be a fool to thry to putt the law on Cormac O’Daly, an’ him an attorney,” explained Jerry, in defiant self-defense. “Perhaps that’s true about _your_ putting the law on him,” Bernard permitted himself to say. “But you’re a trustee, you tell me, as much as he is, and others can act for you and force him to give his accounts. That can be done upon your trust-deed.” “Me paper, is it?” “Yes, the one the boss gave you.” “Egor! O’Daly has it. He begged me for it, to keep ’em together. If I’d ask him for it, belike he’d refuse me. You’ve no knowledge of the characther of that same O’Daly.” For just a moment the young man turned away, his face clouded with the shadows of a baffled mind. Then he looked Jerry straight in the eye. “See here,” he said, “you trust me, don’t you? You believe that I want to act square by you and help you in this thing?” “I do, sir,” said Jerry, simply.