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—Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!

—Well, J. J. O’Molloy said, Bushe K. C., for example.

—Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes. Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.

—He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for… But no matter.

J. J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:

—One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him.

By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story, beast with two backs?

—What was that? the professor asked.

—He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O’Molloy said, of Roman justice as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the Vatican.

—Ha.

—A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!

Pause. J .J. O’MollooyO’Molloy [sic] too kouttook out [sic] his cigarette case.

False lull. Something quite ordinary.

Messenger took out his match boxmatchbox [sic] thoughtfully and lit his cigar.

I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.

J. J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words:

—He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and prophecy which, if aught