man as any in it. And he was a man altogether different from the
O'B----s, O'C----s, and O'D----s. Laurence Fitzgibbon could always
get the ear of the House if he chose to speak, and his friends
declared that he might have been high up in office long since if he
would have taken the trouble to work. He was a welcome guest at the
houses of the very best people, and was a friend of whom any one
might be proud. It had for two years been a feather in the cap of
Phineas that he knew Laurence Fitzgibbon. And yet people said that
Laurence Fitzgibbon had nothing of his own, and men wondered how he
lived. He was the youngest son of Lord Claddagh, an Irish peer with a
large family, who could do nothing for Laurence, his favourite child,
beyond finding him a seat in Parliament.

"Well, Finn, my boy," said Laurence, shaking hands with the young
member on board the steamer, "so you've made it all right at
Loughshane." Then Phineas was beginning to tell all the story,
the wonderful story, of George Morris and the Earl of Tulla,--how
the men of Loughshane had elected him without opposition; how he
had been supported by Conservatives as well as Liberals;--how
unanimous Loughshane had been in electing him, Phineas Finn, as its
representative. But Mr. Fitzgibbon seemed to care very little about
all this, and went so far as to declare that those things were
accidents which fell out sometimes one way and sometimes another,
and were altogether independent of any merit or demerit on the part
of the candidate himself. And it was marvellous and almost painful
to Phineas that his friend Fitzgibbon should accept the fact of his
membership with so little of congratulation,--with absolutely no
blowing of trumpets whatever. Had he been elected a member of the
municipal corporation of Loughshane, instead of its representative in
the British Parliament, Laurence Fitzgibbon could not have made less