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The old man rose as he spoke, and taking the lamp from the table, raised it towards the glass case. As he set it down again he looked earnestly at Joyce, and said--

"You think I'm off my head, perhaps--and I'm not sure that I'm not when I get upon this topic--and you're thinking that at the first convenient opportunity you'll slip away, with a 'Thank ye!' and leave the old lunatic to his democratic ravings? But, like many other lunatics, I'm only mad on one subject, and when that isn't mentioned I can converse tolerably rationally, can perhaps even be of some use in advising one friendless and destitute. And you, you say, are both."

"I am, indeed; but I scarcely think you can help me, Mr. Byrne, though I don't for an instant doubt your friendship or your wish to be of service. But it happens that the only people from whom I can hope to get anything in the way of employment, employment that brings money, belong to that class against which you have such violent antipathies, the--the 'swells,' as you call them."