acknowledged privately to his solicitor that the best he could hope
for was a life sentence. "And, by gad! he ought to get it! It is
the most damnable case of bloody murder that I have come across in
all my practice!" But this was before Mr. O'Hara had interviewed
Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

In his hunt for evidence Mr. O'Hara had come upon his fellow
countrywoman in the foreign colony. At first from sheer delight
in her rich brogue and her shrewd native wit, and afterward from
the conviction that her testimony might be turned to good account
on behalf of his client, Mr. O'Hara diligently cultivated
Mrs. Fitzpatrick's acquaintance. It helped their mutual admiration
and their friendship not a little to discover their common devotion
to "the cause o' the paythriot in dear owld Ireland," and their
mutual interest in the prisoner Kalmar, as a fellow "paythriot."

Immediately upon his discovery of the rich possibilities in Mrs.
Fitzpatrick Mr. O'Hara got himself invited to drink a "cup o' tay,"
which, being made in the little black teapot brought all the way
from Ireland, he pronounced to be the finest he had had since
coming to Canada fifteen years ago. Indeed, he declared that he
had serious doubts as to the possibilities of producing on this
side of the water and by people of this country just such tea as he
had been accustomed to drink in the dear old land. It was over this
cup of tea, and as he drew from Mrs. Fitzpatrick the description of
the scene between the Nihilist and his children, that Mr. O'Hara
came to realise the vast productivity of the mine he had uncovered.
He determined that Mrs. Fitzpatrick should tell this tale in court.

"We'll bate that divil yet!" he exclaimed to his new-found friend,