With respect to his education, Val's gratitude was principally due to his grandfather Clank, who had him well instructed.

He himself, from the beginning, was shrewd, clever, and intelligent, and possessed the power, in a singular degree, of adapting himself to his society, whenever he felt it his interest to do so.

He could, indeed, raise or depress his manners in a very surprising degree, and with an effort that often occasioned astonishment.

On the other hand, he was rapacious, unscrupulous, cowardly, and so vindictive, that he was never known to forgive an injury.

These are qualities to which, when you add natural adroitness and talent, you have such a character as has too frequently impressed itself, with something like the agreeable sensations produced by a red hot burning iron, upon the distresses, fears, and necessities of the Irish people.
M'Clutchy rose from the humble office of process-server to that of bailiff's follower, bailiff, head-bailiff, barony constable, until, finally, he felt himself a kind of factotum on the Castle Cumber property; and in proportion as he rose, so did his manners rise with him.