Dr. O’Grady owed a good deal, and just at the time of Lord Manton’s return to Clonmore, his money difficulties reached the point at which they began to attract public attention. Like most good-humoured and easy-going men, Dr. O’Grady lived beyond his income. There was a good deal of excuse for him. He enjoyed, as dispensary doctor, a salary of £120 a year. He received from Lord Manton an additional £30 for looking after the health of the gardeners, grooms, indoor servants and others employed about Clonmore Castle. He would have been paid extra guineas for attending Lord Manton himself if the old gentleman had ever been ill. He could count with tolerable certainty on two pounds a year for ushering into the world young O’Loughlins. Nobody else in his district ever paid him anything. It is unquestionably possible to live on £152 a year. Many men, curates for instance, live on less; face the world in tolerably clean collars and succeed in looking as if they generally had enough to eat. But Dr. O’Grady was not the kind of man who enjoys small economies, and he had certain expensive tastes. He liked to have a good horse between the shafts of a smart trap when he went his rounds. He liked to see the animal’s coat glossy and the harness shining. He preferred good whisky to bad, and smoked tobacco at 10_s._ 6_d._ a pound. He was particular about the cut of his clothes and had a fine taste in striped and spotted waistcoats. He also--quite privately, for in the west of Ireland no one would admit that he threw away his money wantonly--bought a few books every year. The consequence was inevitable. Dr. O’Grady got into debt. At first, indeed for more than two years, his debts, though they increased rapidly, did not cause any uneasiness to his creditors. Then a suspicious tailor began to press rudely for the payment of a long account. Other tradesmen, all of them strangers who did not know Dr. O’Grady personally, followed the tailor’s example. A Dublin gentleman of large fortune and philanthropic tastes, a Mr. Lorraine Vavasour, having somehow heard of these embarrassments, offered to lend Dr. O’Grady any sum from £10 to £1000 privately, without security, and on the understanding that repayment should be made quite at the borrower’s convenience.