not. Perhaps it may be more agreeable for me, for I can tell my story my
own version, and not be interrupted. Well, that was called the old
record, for they tried it seventeen times. I believe, on my conscience,
it killed old Jones, who was in the Common Pleas; he used to say, if he
put it for trial on the day of judgment, one of the parties would be sure
to lodge an appeal. Be that as it may, the Millses engaged Peter
special, and brought him down with a great retainer, in a chaise and
four, flags flying, and favors in the postillions' hats, and a fiddler on
the roof playing the 'hare in the corn.' The inn was illuminated the
same evening, and Peter made a speech from the windows upon the liberty
of the press and religious freedom all over the globe, and there wasn't a
man in the mob didn't cheer him, which was the more civil, because few of
them knew a word of English, and the others thought he was a play-actor.
But it all went off well, nevertheless, for Peter was a clever fellow;
and although he liked money well, he liked popularity more, and he never
went any where special that he hadn't a public meeting of some kind or
other, either to abolish rents, or suppress parsons, or some such popular
and beneficial scheme, which always made him a great favourite with the
people, and got him plenty of clients. But I am wandering from the
record. Purcell came down, as I said before, special for Mills; and when
he looked over his brief, and thought of the case, he determined to have
it tried by a gentlemen jury, for although he was a great man with the
mob, he liked the country gentlemen better in the jury box, for he was
always coming out with quotations from the classics, which, whether the
grand jury understood or not, they always applauded very much. Well,
when he came into court that morning, you may guess his surprise and
mortification to find that the same jury that had tried a common
ejectment case, were still in the box, and waiting, by the chief
justice's direction, to try Mills versus Mulcahy, the great case of the
assizes.