success. 'Sorra doubt of it, but ould Peter's right, and there's worse
places to live in, and worse landlords to live under, than the lord.'
Not but it taxed Gill's skill and cleverness to maintain this quarantine
against the outer world; and he often felt like Prince Metternich in a like
strait--that it would only be a question of time, and, in the long run, the
newspaper fellows must win.

From what has been said, therefore, it may be imagined that Kilgobbin was
not a model estate, nor Peter Gill exactly the sort of witness from which
a select committee would have extracted any valuable suggestions for the
construction of a land-code.

Anything short of Kate Kearney's fine temper and genial disposition would
have broken down by daily dealing with this cross-grained, wrong-headed,
and obstinate old fellow, whose ideas of management all centred in craft
and subtlety--outwitting this man, forestalling that--doing everything by
halves, so that no boon came unassociated with some contingency or other by
which he secured to himself unlimited power and uncontrolled tyranny.

As Gill was in perfect possession of her father's confidence, to oppose him
in anything was a task of no mean difficulty; and the mere thought that the
old fellow should feel offended and throw up his charge--a threat he had
more than once half hinted--was a terror Kilgobbin could not have faced.
Nor was this her only care. There was Dick continually dunning her for
remittances, and importuning her for means to supply his extravagances. 'I
suspected how it would be,' wrote he once, 'with a lady paymaster. And when
my father told me I was to look to you for my allowance, I accepted the
information as a heavy percentage taken off my beggarly income. What could
you--what could any young girl--know of the requirements of a man going out
into the best society of a capital? To derive any benefit from associating