‘But, Moya, he kens!’ cried Peebles. ‘He kens you were not married to his father. I winna say but, if he had never learned that, ye wad no’ be in the right to keep apart from him; but he knows it. He’s cast off his father; he has barely a friend in the world, barring me, and how can _I_ help him. He has need o’ ye! Ye’ll heal his sair heart, and he’ll love ye and cherish ye and comfort your declining years.’ Moya shook her head. ‘He’s young,’ she replied, with a world of meaning in her tone. ‘A heart as young as his won’t break for such a trouble as he’s suffering now. He’ll go out into the big world, where the shame’s not known, and win his way. What would _I_ be to him--a nameless vagabond, a poor, ignorant ould woman! I should only kape him down and disgrace him. No; ye must tell Desmond nothing--yet. Ye asked me just now,’ she went on after a pause, ‘if I had no other reason to come here afther all these years but just to see my boy?’ ‘Weel?’ asked Peebles. ‘I had--I had another reason, or I’d have resisted the temptation now as I have fought it down all that long, dreary time. I’ve a question to ask ye, Mr. Peebles?’ She paused there for so long a time that the old man snapped out suddenly, with excusable irritation: ‘Weel, weel, lassie! What is’t?’ ‘There’s so much depends on the answer that I hardly dare to ask,’ said Moya, with a voice suddenly gone tremulous. ‘Tell me,’ she continued, after another pause, ‘if ye know a gintleman in this part of the counthry that calls himself Blake--one Patrick Blake, of Blake’s Hall?’ ‘Do I know him?’ echoed Peebles. ‘Ay, I know him fine, the drunken scoundrel! A’body kens him for miles round. But what depends on my knowing Patrick Blake, lassie?’ ‘Much may depend on it,’ said Moya. ‘Desmond’s own future may depend on it.’ ‘Desmond’s future? Why, what in the name of a’ that’s meaning can Pat Blake hae to do wi’ Desmond’s future?’ ‘Was Mr. Blake,’ asked Moya slowly, and with an amount of effort which helped the old man to understand the importance she attached to the answer--‘was Mr. Blake ever a clerk in holy orders?’ Peebles stared at her in sheer bewilderment. Had she asked if he himself had ever been Pope of Rome, the question could hardly have seemed more ludicrous; but there was a painful solemnity in her manner which would have stayed a man less grave than he from laughter. ‘Holy orders!’ he muttered. ‘Holy orders! Patrick Blake! By my soul, but it’s an odd question!’ ‘Not under that name, I mane, but another--Ryan O’Connor.’ ‘He’s borne no name but Patrick Blake that I ever kenned o’,’ said Peebles, still groping painfully for any meaning in Moya’s queries. ‘She’s haverin’,’ he muttered to himself; but the calm intentness of Moya’s glance, though contradicted by the heaving bosom and irregular breath with which she spoke, did not accord with the explanation. ‘What if he ever was a priest under that or any other name?’ he asked at last.