All his sisters and brothers having been for some years married and settled in life, he, and his father, who was a widower, kept a bachelor's house, where we regret to say the parental surveillance over his morals was not so strict as it ought to have been.

Young Dick was handsome, and so exceedingly vain of his person, that any one wishing to gain a favor either from himself or his worthy sire, had little more to do than dexterously apply a strong dose of flattery to this his weakest point, and the favor was sure to be granted, for his influence over old Dick was boundless.
In this family, then, it was that Hanlon held the situation we have described--that is, partly a gardener, and partly a steward, and partly a laboring man.

There was a rude and riotous character in and about Dick's whole place, which marked it at once as the property of a person below the character of a gentleman.

Abundance there was, and great wealth; but neither elegance nor neatness marked the house or furniture.
His servants partook of the same equivocal appearance, as did the father and son, and the "Grange" in general; but, above all and everything in his establishment, must we place, in originality and importance, Jemmy Branigan, who, in point of fact, ought to receive credit for the greater portion of old Dick's reputation, or at least for all that was good of it.

Jemmy was his old, confidential--enemy--for more than forty years, during the greater portion of which period it could scarcely be said with truth that, in Jemmy's hands, Dick o' the Grange ought to be looked to as a responsible person.