I now come to the time in which I myself was mixed up with the people that I have been writing about.And to make you understand how Ibecame connected with them, I must give you some little account of myself.My father was the younger son of a Devonshire gentleman of moderate property; my eldest uncle succeeded to the estate of his forefathers, my second became an eminent attorney in London, and my father took orders.Like most poor clergymen, he had a large family;and I have no doubt was glad enough when my London uncle, who was a bachelor, offered to take charge of me, and bring me up to be his successor in business.
In this way I came to live in London, in my uncle's house, not far from Gray's Inn, and to be treated and esteemed as his son, and to labour with him in his office.I was very fond of the old gentleman.
He was the confidential agent of many country squires, and had attained to his present position as much by knowledge of human nature as by knowledge of law; though he was learned enough in the latter.
He used to say his business was law, his pleasure heraldry.From his intimate acquaintance with family history, and all the tragic courses of life therein involved, to hear him talk, at leisure times, about any coat of arms that came across his path was as good as a play or a romance.Many cases of disputed property, dependent on a love of genealogy, were brought to him, as to a great authority on such points.If the lawyer who came to consult him was young, he would take no fee, only give him a long lecture on the importance of attending to heraldry; if the lawyer was of mature age and good standing, he would mulct him pretty well, and abuse him to me afterwards as negligent of one great branch of the profession.His house was in a stately new street called Ormond Street, and in it he had a handsome library; but all the books treated of things that were past; none of them planned or looked forward into the future.Iworked away--partly for the sake of my family at home, partly because my uncle had really taught me to enjoy the kind of practice in which he himself took such delight.I suspect I worked too hard; at any rate, in seventeen hundred and eighteen I was far from well, and my good uncle was disturbed by my ill looks.
One day, he rang the bell twice into the clerk's room at the dingy office in Grey's Inn Lane.It was the summons for me, and I went into his private room just as a gentleman--whom I knew well enough by sight as an Irish lawyer of more reputation than he deserved--was leaving.
My uncle was slowly rubbing his hands together and considering.Iwas there two or three minutes before he spoke.Then he told me that I must pack up my portmanteau that very afternoon, and start that night by post-horse for West Chester.I should get there, if all went well, at the end of five days' time, and must then wait for a packet to cross over to Dublin; from thence I must proceed to a certain town named Kildoon, and in that neighbourhood I was to remain, making certain inquiries as to the existence of any descendants of the younger branch of a family to whom some valuable estates had descended in the female line.The Irish lawyer whom Ihad seen was weary of the case, and would willingly have given up the property, without further ado, to a man who appeared to claim them;but on laying his tables and trees before my uncle, the latter had foreseen so many possible prior claimants, that the lawyer had begged him to undertake the management of the whole business.In his youth, my uncle would have liked nothing better than going over to Ireland himself, and ferreting out every scrap of paper or parchment, and every word of tradition respecting the family.As it was, old and gouty, he deputed me.
Accordingly, I went to Kildoon.I suspect I had something of my uncle's delight in following up a genealogical scent, for I very soon found out, when on the spot, that Mr.Rooney, the Irish lawyer, would have got both himself and the first claimant into a terrible scrape, if he had pronounced his opinion that the estates ought to be given up to him.There were three poor Irish fellows, each nearer of kin to the last possessor; but, a generation before, there was a still nearer relation, who had never been accounted for, nor his existence ever discovered by the lawyers, I venture to think, till I routed him out from the memory of some of the old dependants of the family.